By Kieron Gillen on July 17th, 2009 at 2:43 pm.
So, I reviewed an MMO.
Some director notes. We start with useful information, get increasingly meta.
Now, I’m traveling for the next 10 days, but a glance around the comments reminds me a couple more things I wanted to bring up. One positive, one negative.
Negatively, I catch someone talking about how altering the bindings improves the control system. Which is, of course, like saying “If I reprogram the game, it becomes playable”. You can fix Darkfall, but having something in an optimum position is the game designer’s job. The example I was going to use was the mysterious case of the run key. It’s – if memory serves me – Shift. However, swapping your hot-key bars default to SHIFT plus a number. So if you’re running away trying to switch to a more appropriate weapon – like your staff to allow a little healing or whatever – you actually swap what set of icons rather than to the weapon you may need for a little thing like saving your life. This is fixable – though notably the key I wanted to select for the task wouldn’t work for some reason – but the idea that a developer hadn’t even thought about it – or, even worse, thought that somehow it was a good idea - speaks volumes.
Positively, I mentioned the the joy of running for my fucking life the first time. There was a later time, when I was involved in a duel with an Orc Beastmaster. I’d lured him away from the pack, around the back of the castle, and was committing more energy to the battle than I normally would. He falls as the moment as another player in fancy armour on a mount comes careening towards me. I react immediately. I have to run. Of course, the castle is at the top of a peak. To escape, I throw myself off the cliff. I have more of a chance of surviving the floor than a direct confrontation. Of course, I die. The guy rides up and rather than doing the coup de grace which would send me back to whence I came, heals me then rides off. A lovely little vignette which comes entirely from Darkfall’s characteristics.
That’s the thing with Darkfall. Despite everything, it’s much more like an MMO I’d like to throw my time in than the anything WoW-derived. Its problem is that it’s just not good enough. To be charitable, you can say “yet”. But “Yet” doesn’t matter in reviews. Marking for potential is forever foolish.
It’s been an interesting gig. I knew it would be the second Tom phoned me late on Thursday night to ask if I’d be willing to do it. Of course, I was half-cut, so happily agreed. I was on contract with Eurogamer for a set number of pieces a month. I was off on holiday for a week, so was happy to take this clearly poisoned chalice. And, as I’ve told everyone who’s asked me about it, I ended up feeling like Mr Wolf from Pulp Fiction. “There’s a dead review with a hole in his head in the Eurogamer car. Can you help us scoop up its brains”. Of course, I’m nothing like Mr Wolf, as it took me two months to get it done.
But I got it done. And it’s an odd gig.
Problem is that there’s so much bad blood. Aventurine didn’t want the review for a variety of reasons, but the obvious one is “whatever score you give it, doesn’t matter.” Give it the same mark, we’re just not budging. Giving it high, we’re a sellout and/or admitting EG’s incompetent. Give it a middling one and you’re splitting the difference. Of course, this is true. The job was trying to make it possible for the review to become something else other than just a straight review. Which is what attracted me to it. It’s a job that required both an enormous ego and a lack of one. As in, you had to be willing to deal with things no straight review ever could dare to while trying to keep the “you” relatively invisible.
Because, really, this was a scooping up bits of brain job… but instead of getting the body in a car-disposer, I had to go and perform a relatively tasteful funeral. Ed’s took a world of shit for this, up to and including threatening phonecalls demanding he be sacked to his not-videogames-connected day-job. (I almost brought this up in my recent piece for Drowned In Sound regarding the whole Death of the Critic thing, where I was comparing what music and games critics get up to. I decided to avoid it, as invoking Darkfall before the review came out would muddy the waters even further).
Conversely, I can also understand the outrage of the fans. While I didn’t read Ed’s review, I read a lot of the response to it. And more importantly, as I say in the review, the people who go native in an MMO have emigrated there. The response is at least partially a patriotic response. If I published a serious column in a newspaper saying the USA was shit, I’d get a similarly vicious response. This is about identity. And, as my time with Darkfall proved, most of the players were perfectly friendly. The actual rampage on the net had one major consequence – a lot of people who weren’t committed started to dismiss them as plain nutsoid. Why on earth would you want to play a game with them? Darkfall’s got many problems, but in my experience, the playerbase isn’t amongst them.
In other words, I wanted to try and do something which was about understanding – try and show what all the sides were thinking and why they were doing so, without actually not writing about what I think. So, the interstitial-essay approach, the (relatively) stripped-back prose style, and so on. Seems to have done okay.
Couple more things:
Firstly, I mentioned I was on contract with EG. Well, I’m not any more. I’ve too much comic work on right now, so can’t really keep it up. As such, it means that RPS is my sole ongoing games journalism commitment – and we don’t do reviews. As such, I could have totally have quit at the end of the review to amp up the drama-llamaism some more. But that’d be becoming the story, and betrays of the lack-of-ego part of the gig upthread. If I didn’t feel so sad over the whole thing, I may have been tempted. But this one mattered too much for stage-gestures.
Secondly, there’s one group I’ve been genuinely furious at over this. That is, a selection of my fellow journalists. Even with a slight amount of thought, you can see why Editor Tom couldn’t back down just from Aventurine saying it’s so. In private conversation, it’s pretty bad. In public conversation, it’s sickening. Seeing long term professionals – and, even worse, long term professionals who I could name reviews which if their editors listened to the reader response should have sacked their sorry asses on the spot – side entirely with Aventurine was the blackest hour of this whole adventure. When you could be the next one to have to deal with this shit, through no fault of your own, a little respect and faith in your fraternity is something you could consider displaying. And if that’s too much, shut the fuck up.
Finally: The Darkfall review was written entirely to the Gallows first album, the Bronx’s third and Sleater Kinney’s Good Things. All are lovely.
I’ve read one sentence of this article and half the review and give it 2/10.
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So, better than Darkfall, then.
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The line “For the record: If I ever actually find out conclusively that someone was lying in this matter, I will do everything I can to destroy them.” made me laugh, although I’m not really doubting it is sincere.
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comics books gain is our loss
any chance of a sign copy of beta ray bill?
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Owch, you ripped that game a new one.
Most interesting part of this:
Your listening to the gallows? Owch. Man, I went to a live show they supported at, they got boo’d off about…4 songs in, they were dry, drunk and boring. Fun times.
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Well, a comment like this probably would be swamped in the EG comments so here it is: good show.
Not doing anything for PC Gamer UK anymore as well?
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Surely it would be better for everyone except idiots to stop putting scores at the end of reviews?
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There’s nothing much extra that needs adding, other than the fact I think both you and Tom (Bramwell) went about this in entirely the correct way. I really felt quite bad for Ed, having to put up with all the shitstorm around it.
And when you compared the response to patriotism, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time Charlie Brooker wrote an offhand comment in one of his television columns about wishing Bush would be killed, which was shortly followed by death threats to him. Seriously, this writing thing can be a bastard sometimes.
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When a review needs a historical disclaimer you know it’s going to be interesting.
I read the review this afternoon and thought it was a fantastic piece of journalism, even-handed, seemingly unbiased and entertaining.
That it managed to get under the skin of issues surrounding MMO reviewing and the different approaches you considered applying to the review effectively immunize you from criticism from Darkfall players and I think a number of them (assuming they actually read it and not just the score at the end) will probably agree with you, from what i’ve seen of coverage across the web.
At the risk of posting a superlong comment that no-one reads, I’m in the same boat with regards to preferring something that steers clear of the WoW/Thempark MMO archetype. Mortal Online seems to be the great white hope with regards to that currently (Aside from Eve anyway). Hopefully it’s developers can see where Darkfall went wrong and create a more complete experience.
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lmfao, surely they can’t complain about this loquacious review.
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It’s all good, what you say. Whilst I think the review is good, that you’ve written, there simply isn’t a way to resolve something like that well. You’ve got so many accusations flying; as you say, whatever you had done, it would never have been right for everyone.
At least that’s the end of the matter. Now we can go back to the games we actually play.
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I must admit, I jumped straight to the end and the comments on the review itself although read your comments here in their entirety, and will be looking at the review itself a bit later. However I was vaguely amused by this comment:
“Not only a Darkfall review but a review of reviewing MMOs themselves, now that was a bit unexpected.”
To which I couldn’t help but think, “This is Gillen we’re talking about here, thats exactly what I’d have expected.”
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SwiftRanger: Haven’t done anything since the back page for issue 200. I’m sure an occasional thing will still happen.
qrter: That line was probably rephrased more times than any other one. I smirked a bit when writing it too.
Bears: But when they’re on, they’re on.
The_B: I was thinking of Brooker when writing that.
KG
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@ChaosSmurf;
If the half the review you read the the negative then I can fullu understand.
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For this part:
“The guy rides up and rather than doing the coup de grace which would send me back to whence I came, heals me then rides off. A lovely little vignette which comes entirely from Darkfall’s characteristics.”
Is that really a Darkfall-specific thing, or is it just one of those moments of relief you sometimes get in MMOs when you realise not every other player is a dickhead?
Either way, the review was a great read.
Now all we need to do is get you shunned by the world of comic books so you can devote your life to RPS.
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Ian: The amount of sheer fear in terms of relative power levels, etc. How often these people cross paths. That kind of stuff.
KG
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Wow, this is easily the best MMO review I ever read.
And a bold move to state the estimated time you played (~ 20 hrs). Most people will complain that this time is too short for a fair review in the genre, but I agree that if it doesn’t turn you on in that time span, why bother with it even longer? Gaming is meant to be fun, not to put 30 hours of hard work in it just to earn the possibility of a reward. It’s funny that it’s almost only MMO fanboys that do this twisted thinking.
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I absolutely loved the review. I thought it was passionate, I thought the interludes were very interesting (I loved the idea of revealing you’re a journalist JUST before you logged out), and I thought you were very, very fair on the game. You weren’t dismissive of it.
Fantastic, enjoyable piece. For me, the score here was irrelevant. It’s a game I’m never going to play, and neither am I going to play games of its ilk (I’d rather see a totally different MMO experience like APB, than a more hardcore and unintuitive version of my current love, WOW), but it was really interesting to read nonetheless. Great stuff.
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KG: Ah, fair point. Was looking at it more from the “well that was nice” viewpoint rather than the gank-potential.
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Something Darkfall does do, which is worth elaborating, is show how interesting a more action-based system can be. Someone running from you, switching to arrows and then judging trajectories to get one in their head to finish off… that’s a great little moment.
KG
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Good review. I’ve been following Darkfall for ages, would probably have bought it if it wasn’t for the ridiculous price. I think it’s one to check out again in a year or so, when hopefully many of the problems will have been sorted.
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How long have we got before the Darkfall community find this post and invade this comments thread?
I mean, I need to know when this shelter has to be ready by so we can all hide in it.
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Gnn. The review is way too good. It’s practically fly-by-wire. If that does turn out to be the last games review you ever write, you’ve set the bar nice and high for the rest of us.
Salute!
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I loved your review Kieron. Just beautiful, in every way.
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Kieron, I was wondering if “I have too much work doing comics” it´s a good excuse to leave the professional side of this industry of games critic, and just keep the romantic one (RPS). Are you burnt of this work? (I have the feeling you already were in your last days as Deputy Editor at PCG).
Sorry if it sounds too personal, it´s just that I’m passing for my very own crisis about the business of gaming criticism/reporting (in part because external situations related to the sorry state of press in general in my country, in part for the limitations and nature of this job). So I was wondering if you have foreseen a kind of conceptual dead end for this job, at least at its most professional side.
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I quite enjoyed the piece, and if it does indeed serve as a “goodbye for now” from EG, I can’t imagine a better way.
That said, it still strikes me as a bit odd that you can get your game re-reviewed as long as you and your playerbase raise a stink.
I know there are precedents for this kind of thing. Ebert’s re-review of Brown Bunny comes to mind, but then again he reviewed two different cuts of the film. I can’t quite imagine that the Darkfall of your review was that different than the Darkfall of EG’s previous.
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Acosta: Those of us who consider games journalism in crisis are the exact ones who need to stay.
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Acosta: Hunger for the new. Only so many hours in the day and I’ve agreed to do so much stuff something’s got to give. If I had another 10 hours a day, I’d do it all.
I’ll admit the money is an influence in terms of what I’m prioritising. When I love it all, doing something just as creative which pays better* is attractive. And I’m almost 34. I probably should think about actually earning a wage at some point in my life.
I will be sad if I ever stop writing on games.
(I stress, I’m talking about an *ongoing* relationship. I’m still open for people asking me to do stuff. Tom’s having me look at Left 4 Dead 2 when I’m at San Diego, for example)
EDIT: I was burnt out when I left PCG. Change of pace rejuvenated me nicely.
KG
*And you get more respect for, abstractly could lead to new stuff, etc.**
**And the new. Doing new stuff is exciting.
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beaut’ piece there kieron.
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Excellent review, and excellent commentary on the review.
In some respects I can see where the Darkfall players are coming from.
The average non-Darkfall player looks at it and thinks “The UI is beyond broken, therefore it is rubbish” (Or something along those lines), and a lot of Darkfall players say “Well if you took the time to learn our horribly over-complicated and unintuitive UI maybe you’d love the game” (Only with more swearing and general hostility).
This argument of theirs is rarely given much credence but it brings Dwarf Fortress to mind. The few times I’ve tried it, it was utterly impenetrable, and there’s a lot of people who agree with me. Yet you only ever hear its praise sung.
I’m not really going anywhere with this, and obviously they’re very different games and Darkfall has more problems than the just the UI (And costs a lot more than free) but it seems that its major crime, rubbish controls/UI is occasionally a forgivable offense.
Or it’s that Dwarf Fortress is so bloody awesome the hurdle of its UI is worth it, whereas even with the best controls in the world Darkfall would still be a little pants.
Well now I’ve talked myself up into trying to crack Dwarf Fortress again.
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I’m not surprised your fellow journos were split on the whole thing, 2hrs is stupid, but even the 8hrs he put forward after the accusations is hardly ideal for an MMO :\
Ah the joys of reviewing MMOs.
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As a review it’s okay. Because he breaks up his prose in tiny bits. Digestable fragments. Still, giving it a 4 is selling out. Shoulda been a 2.7
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I too thought the review was great, but man, what a challenge. Great pieces like these really put game writing into perspective. It’s too bad you won’t be doing much game coverage going forward =/ all the best writers get out of the business. PCG is still good but it’s slowly sinking. More and more stuff from the American staff.
Dammit if Brem X Jones doesn’t review Deus Ex 3!
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He needed to support his hungry kids and big-spender wife apparently. Darkfall comment pages really bring out the mentalists.
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Darkfall sounds very reminiscent of Star Wars Galaxies, an overall horrible and broken game but one that could still satisfy a certain type of player through the freedom it gave to create their own place in its world. That plus running up verticle cliff faces.
Then they had to go and rip out its soul, perhaps leaving a better game behind but with nothing to connect it to the old but the dreary aesthetic. Bah, fuck SoE. The wounds are still raw :(
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The Bronx II > The Bronx III
:D
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@LewieP “Surely it would be better for everyone except idiots to stop putting scores at the end of reviews?”
I wanted to agree to this first, but it’s not true of course. The illusion that review scores are an indication for a game’s quality is very helpful to many customers, because it allows them to ignore most of the games that are released and narrow down their buying decision to a few games.
I think it does not really matter that the score is not a real indicator. If you have to decide between 100 different games and some magic numbers offers to help you to cut it down to 10, you don’t ask questions.
And of course news magazines get linked on metacritic and on a game’s website. And the numbers are a very good topic for ‘discussions’.
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Thanks for the answer Kieron. The piece of drownedinsoul was excellent, it reflects very well many of my own issues with the media, except for the part that I’m not an award winner journalist and I don’t have any kind of prestige that could make me believe I could change things. Let’s say that my “denial cape of protection” was tinier than yours, and now I think I just lost it.
Will check your review tonight, I’m sure it´s worth reading. It´s a shame no more publications allow to their reviewers stay two months reviewing MMOs, I’m sure we would have more interesting and well thought pieces of criticism. It´s pretty amazing that these games are still treated like every other, when being part of a ongoing community it´s such a key part of the experiencie. I’m not contrary to a more “inmediate” review, but editors should make a effort to find a more rationale formula for covering these games.
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We have proof Kieron only played 4 hours!
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This is one of the few reviews I’ve read in entirety in the last couple of months. I enjoyed it thoroughly, I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be the end result — enjoyment. I think Kieron has handled it well, though I believe Ed’s evaluation is as valid as any reviewer’s opinion has ever been.
In short, I suppose, I came for the controversy and stayed for the writing.
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I heard he played 3 hours then spent the last hour thinking up ways to compare Darkfall to sex.
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I’ve always thought the best way to review an MMO is a sort of MMO MOT. One full review on release to cover the first month and then a mini review every 3 or 4 months to see how it’s progressed. That way you give a full overview following its first public month and any glaring errors or glowing triumphs whilst the MOT would be able to explain how the community has changed and whether the problems have resolved/grown. Admittedly as most new content is “end game” stuff then you risk hiring natives but really MMO developers should give reviewers a debug version or the chance to borrow an appropriate level character.
I also think if a game hasn’t sucked you in after 20 hours, my limit would be six hours, then it just isn’t worth it. A review is a consumers guide first and foremost and theres plenty of better more absorbing games out there.
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Hey, Kieron, your review (along with a nice bit of perspective on the whole situation) has been posted to Metafilter. It’s a nice post, too. (Thought you should know)
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It’s stuff like this why I read RPS with adblock off.. good show sir you are a credit to your profession. I really hope you’ll do at least some more reviews for EG just so it doesn’t go all IGN on us.
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Z: Which reminds me of SoloRaider’s awesomeness. 7000/100!
KG
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I agree with Lewis. Down with scores!
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That’s definitely a tough position to be in, having to review a game with this kind of history, especially with the “conspiracy” mindset the gaming world has been obsessed with of late. No matter what score you gave it, someone was going to shout “CONSPIRACY!!”, but in the end I thought that it was a very fair and balanced review. You didn’t try and hide the fact that there was a review fiasco before, you explained the good, the bad, and the frustrating, and in the end I got the impression that you truly felt it deserved a 4 and nothing more or less.
I also have to say, major respect for standing behind your fellows, a lot of people these days are quick to sell out because the “customer is always right” and numbers are everything. Which is of course false, the customer is never right, and loyalty is of more worth than currency. Good stuff.
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It’s amazing how a good piece of writing can enliven the experience it’s describing. Reading through your review made it seem like you were having a lot of fun. In fact, even your descriptions of the game’s worst flaws, by being humorous, made it seem like those flaws amused you at some level and thus perversely contributed to your overall enjoymentof the game. I was hence kinda shocked to see the low score at the end. I think numerical scores are idiotic tbh, but the review itself was great. It actually made me want to try it out even though I had no intention to beforehand, because it did a great job of highlighting its pros while warning me about its problems.
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(Just to add: I think it’s pretty obvious that people forewarned of problems deal better with them, so, ironically, reading Gillen’s mostly negative review before trying the game would probably improve someone’s reaction to it – negative reviews boost sales! :) )
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A little note since I can’t Edit: I really thought SoloRaider was joking, but he’s actually kind a of nut.
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Double the score of the original review? Clearly the fix is in.
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Of. A. Nut.
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’tis a very fine review and seems like a good end to the whole thing.
@ LewieP: No, I don’t think so, it wouldn’t be good for me and I don’t think I’m an idiot although my judgement is obviously not to be trusted in the matter because I might be an idiot but never the less I don’t think so. See as much as I enjoy reading well written reviews there are other things I’d rather be doing then reading even one review for each of the big releases. Take inFamous for example, I don’t own a PS3 so my interest in the title isn’t the greatest, I’d really only care about it if it’s an exceptional game that should go into my list of reasons to shell out for a PS3. If my only option to find that out is to put the time in to read the full text of a no doubt very entertaining two page review to find that out then I probably won’t bother but if I can just flick to the end and see that Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell considers it a 7/10 then that’s enough information there for me to relax in the knowledge in that I’m probably not missing out on anything really special.
I also don’t think it would change that much in this case. If Ed Zitron hadn’t put a 2/10 at the end I still think the Aventurine and their fans might have still got upset by the fact he mauled it in the body of the text.
@ boowormat: I agree with most of what you said but what do you mean by “The illusion that review scores are an indication for a game’s quality” and “the score is not a real indicator”? Those to assertions both strike me as false. I believe they are meant to given an indication of quality and I can’t take seriously the idea that they fail in that, that it’s only an illusion. I think the poorer quality games do tend to get lower scores and so they really do give an indication. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to infer from their relative metacritic scores that Half-Life 2 is a higher quality game then Big Rigs: Over the road racing but if they don’t give any indication, if it is only an illusion then that inference can’t be valid.
@ Dante: Why?
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“Of course, I haven’t played it enough.”
The “review” could’ve been just that and it would have been enough. I don’t need to dissect the sentence, it justifies the whole piece.
It would’ve been good to have not had to put a score at the end. Moreso for this piece than a typical review, the score was bound to be controversial, no matter what number you gave it. The best way to subvert that though would’ve been no score.
Congratulations, Gillen. Once again, you’ve handled a complex situation maturely, while still harking on about masturbation. Your ego is well earned.
Not that you need any more ego boosts, but Kieron’s writing in PCG is what really made me appreciate well written reviews and features. Keep up the good work in both comics and games journalism.
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Persus-9: But what did the 2/10 mean? That the game was of low quality? So why do some people play it? Why do they consider it to be a great game? It’s hard to measure the quality of a game objectively A lot of people, upon loading up Darkfall, would agree with the 2/10 score. Others would actually grow to like the game, and demand that it be given, well, 7000/100.
That’s one thing I liked about Kieron’s review. It clearly stated that the game is deeply flawed, but at the core of it are some things that, for some, may redeem it. So should the score reflect the flaws, or the quality that you’re able to find if you *really* look for it? Or an average, which would just infuriate both camps? It’s far too half-baked for a, say, 6/10, but if you focus on the good ideas in it, it’s far better than a 6/10. Who’s right? Which way should the score lean?
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@Schadenfreude – Don’t forget the Stockhom Syndrome. The more you play a MMO, the more beauty you can see beyond it’s evil sadistic nature. We people cope.
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Great review. Made me want to play it, though I suspect that, like my feelings re: AoC, has more to do with it sounding like a more interactive gaming experience than WoW. You’re right, though, compared to any real action title it probably won’t hold up.
I’m skint anyway. If I had money I’d buy Arma 2.
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That was a really, really good article. (Review? I was never going to play Darkfall Online anyway. But just as a description of a strange world, it was worth reading.)
Sad to hear you’ll be doing less with Eurogamer from now on (if anything); seeing stuff from you guys on there was always a nice surprise.
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Great review, it is obvious that a fair judgement was strived for and what else can one ask for?
You’re better off out of pro games journalism Keiron if the current level of discourse over at EG on the darkfall thread is anything to go by:-
“Sorry to say this but Kieron shouldnt review a game that has already been reviewed. This is very unproffesional by him. But i guess Kieron has kids to feed and a big spender wife to support so i can understand him”
Constructive critiscm!
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Like Shawn Elliott said, you can find the most heinous excuse for a game and there will be someone on the internet who thinks it’s the best thing ever.
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Both the Eurgamer and Drowned in Sound articles were excellent!
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I just checked the thread about this article on the Darkfall forum. Every second (possible every 2 in 3) post calls you a “noob”, and there’s also a bit of racism (“OMG are you Pakistani”) for good measure. Charming bunch.
P.
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Is that a Helen Love reference I spy? Nice work. And a fantastic piece overall.
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“I think the poorer quality games do tend to get lower scores and so they really do give an indication.”
I will admit that there is a link between the score and (what reviewers think about) the quality of the game. However, the link is much too weak to say something like “a 70% game is worse than a 90% game”.
Here are a few factors that blur the numbers:
* Different reviewers: There is not really a “Eurogamer score” or a IGN score.
* Time when the reviewer decides on the score: Did he play another game of the same genre recently? Did he get laid the night before the review? Is he currently in the right mood for the genre?
* Historic content: 5 years ago a game got a score of 95%, now the sequel is just as fun but did not improve much. Does the reviewer give the game a better score because it is still an improved game, or does he give a worse score because there is not enough ‘innovation’?
* State of the game at release: Most games, at least on PC, are sold as services these days. The gameplay, the amount of content, and the price change from month to month.
Demigod was buggy at release, Zeno Clash was very short, and a third game might be broken by design and boring to play. The Metascore for all these games is in the mid 70ties. And 5 month later Demigod is fixed, Zeno Clash is on sale for $5, and the score does still puts these fantastic games into the same folder as the game with the broken design, which is not worth a cent.
What the review likes about a game can be explained very well in a review, and not at all through a number. So a game that got a score of 70% could just as well be the best game of the decade to you at the time you consider buying it.
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last post was @Persus-9…
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@ Paul Moloney
Yes, I was browsing it a couple minutes ago, and was unsurprised by the level of “insipid wankery”, as they put it.
Oh, a good one;
“Didn’t even bother reading it. [SNIP] It’s not very good in any way.”
It’s no wonder the people I’ve known to actually play it no longer do so because it’s simply “not fun enough to maintain interest”.
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I’ll just echo what others have said here: that was one great review and without a doubt the best MMO review I’ve ever read.
So, um, thanks!
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I’m not sure you even can review an MMO – I was a ‘native’ to WoW for a long time, but on reflection it was the people and social side that kept me playing. I still play now, but out the other end having quit and gone back I feel like I finally have the critical distance to judge it.
But it’s still almost impossible. The latest WoW expansion is incredible. The world-building, atmosphere, variety of quests, coherent storylines… it’s excellent. But you can’t play it until you play through levels 1-70 first, and that content really hasn’t dated well at all. So it’s practically impossible to recommend it to anyone.
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Almost all the complaints people seem to level against Darkfall are comparable to the complaints I had about Eve Online when I first tried it – I just couldn’t get into it. It was impenetrable, it was buggy, it was confusing and there was nothing for me to do beyond listen to stories of other players getting up to much more interesting things.
To this day, I’ve never been able to get into Eve Online, but a lot of people absolutely swear by it. I can see the appeal when I’m looking at it from a distance, but I can’t for the life of me enjoy it as a game.
Can’t say it’s a bad game, though. Just really not for me. It’s why everything I’ve read about Darkfall is pretty interesting. Its fans are especially rabid, so clearly there is something there for them. Now, ‘It’s the same for all MMOs!’ cries that man in the back.
Hit that man. He’s a liar.
Age of Conan. It came, it saw, and even the most early of early adopters could admit that a lot was very wrong with it, and that it needed to be overhauled. A bad review of it would have gotten a couple of grumbly comments, but I’d imagine general agreement would have been the average result.
Problem is, nobody gave it a bad review. Because they only played a few hours (go figure) and only saw the semi-singleplayer opening section.
MMO reviews need to change. They’re so huge now that the only way to give them a fair shake is a panel of folks who have played it at length. Never review at launch, either, as terrible starting bugs are often crushed quickly.
It’s a prickly subject.
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While I don’t entirely agree with your review I would like to say one thing in defence of the darkfall community as a lot of peeps seem to have judged the game badly on the player response.
I would simply like to point to 1 detail while I think pretty much sums up the big difference between the 2 reviews,
Kieron Got armour and weapons and when hunting equipped,
Ed Was naked and using starting weps
Now If I reviewed WOW and gave it 2 and posted pics of my char naked and commented that it was impossible would you not get enraged? This is why there was such an outcry against the review as the guy was obviously not even trying to play it or even learn the game.
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@Giha:
At least the Darkfall forums thread about Kieron’s review does contain some sane people making sensible comments. (Either agreeing or disagreeing with the review itself – it seems, without playing Darkfall, that it’s one of those games that the majority simply *won’t get past the flaws of*, but those that do become blind to precisely the things that turn the majority off. The sensible criticisms seem to be from the few who have the perspective to realise why someone might have a different opinion to them.)
You still need to do something about the idiots who can’t read though (or the guy who seemed to think that Eurogamer was a person and did all the reviews “himself”), but that’s a problem of any internet community.
(Frankly, if you reviewed WoW and gave it 2/10, I’d be cheering. Not a WoW fan, myself. But, of course, the point is valid in general.)
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Did you kill any players and loot them?
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I don’t know what this is supposed to be…
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I still wonder if price point is a good review scoring system, in lieu of or in addition to a regular numeric quality score. A short, high quality game could get a high score and a low price point. Something like Fallout 3 might get a lower score in my books (gets somewhat tedious at times) but a higher price point (relative to that quality), because it sucks you in and holds you there for your money’s worth in the long run.
@bookwormat, re: historic content… That’s not such a huge problem so long as the score is based on the competitors and the state of the industry today, rather than an attempt to absolutely gauge quality. If a genre is completely stagnant and you release a not-so-innovative-but-just-as-good sequel to a 95% game, then yeah, I could see you still getting a 90%+ score. If that genre has been developing rapidly and left you behind, you’re going to get a lot less.
To illustrate — pretend Pong never existed, and try to release it now. No fancy stuff, just two monochrome paddles, a big low-res ball, etc. Despite its iconic status, if you tried to release it as anything other than a free five-minute Flash game today, you’d have your sanity rudely questioned.
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Lovely review – made me think of Angband, or old-school MUSHes in parts… intermaresting…
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If Pong never existed there would be no such thing as gaming industry today. Just sayin’. (Yes, I’m just trolling, sorry!)
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I honestly wonder whether MMO reviews are really necessary at all. Noone is going to play more than one MMO at once – maybe one on the side for one and a half – because you need to dedicate too much time and money to it. And if you’re going to dedicate that much time and money, then you should really try the game out for yourself and not base it on what some bloke on the internet said, no?
As Kieron says, you know whether you’re going to like Darkfall within a couple of hours. I suspect this is true for most MMOs (and if it isn’t, how long are you willing to play a bad one to see if it gets good?), so just spend that hour or two yourself, rather than letting someone else do it for you.
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“That’s the thing with Darkfall. Despite everything, it’s much more like an MMO I’d like to throw my time in than the anything WoW-derived. Its problem is that it’s just not good enough. To be charitable, you can say “yet”. But “Yet” doesn’t matter in reviews. Marking for potential is forever foolish.”
That it.
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How absolutely mad that a skill-based game can produce any rewards for going into a fight naked. The rules of the world seem at odds with themselves.
But I’d still play it if I had any money to give to MMOs.
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@Kester – “you know whether you’re going to like Darkfall within a couple of hours. I suspect this is true for most MMOs”
I’d argue strongly against that. Maybe for very evenly structured ones like World of Warcraft (where level 50 gameplay is much the same as level 5, but with more attacks to cycle through), but for anything that is built around player-generated content rather than scripted missions, it can be anything from a couple of hours to months.
I’ve heard from plenty of people who played Eve Online for days/weeks, encouraged by others but always feeling like they missed out, until they joined the right corporation and actually started playing WITH people. That point never came for me, so I dropped it after the trial period. Is the game bad? Of course not. That would be silly. I just failed to integrate with the community, in a game which is built entirely around the community.
Darkfall sounds like it’s structured very much along the same lines as Ultima Online, which – as a solo venture – was about as much fun as improvised self-dentistry. Add human beings, and butt heads with other groups and you’ve got a gem.
One huge problem with MMO reviews is that they’re reviewed like singleplayer games. Is there enough content? Are there enough levels? How many dungeons are there? And the percieved quality is judged from those fixed variables, rather than anything as nebulous as ‘Can it simulate a several-hundred-player castle siege with one treacherous player able to swing the tide of the entire battle?’.
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Mr. Kieron, your review is very interesting (on normal and meta level) but maybe is incomplete. I could be wrong, but I feel Darkfall is a game of Guild vs Guild. Is where the game show is best. Another reason to avoid (or just play 30 days) Darkfall is because is not a game for “soloers”, people that don’t want to join a guild and team. I could be wrong, because there are strange people out here, that will play everything (even grindfest like these korean games), but as a western style mmo, I think theres not enough game for soloers.
Also, maybe my comment don’t make sense for you, since is probably deep into the sub-sub-sub-mmorpg culture.
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I’m so bored of “player generated content”, it’s always just who controls certain areas. King of the hill, how incredible.
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@ Dominic “I’d argue strongly against that. Maybe for very evenly structured ones like World of Warcraft (where level 50 gameplay is much the same as level 5, but with more attacks to cycle through), but for anything that is built around player-generated content rather than scripted missions, it can be anything from a couple of hours to months.”
The problem is, if the game is such an atrocious pile of turd in the first few hours that it feels like a chore to play, how many people are actually going to persevere with it to reach the good stuff? With MMO’s of all stripes, it tends to be a case that what you get out of it is determined by what you put in. Naturally the game improves after you’ve invested significant time because a good half of the game is the surrounding community, and that’s a social thing rather than a gaming thing. However, if the game dissuades the player from reaching that point then it should be called on it. The usual reply I get when I’ve discussed this before is that the game may well suck, but the community makes up for it. I suppose that’s fair enough for an MMO (and as an aside, I wonder how many people play WoW because their friends play it rather than any love for the game), but if you’re reviewing it as a game then I’d question the validity of the community’s influence as something to take into account.
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@Flappybat: Wen you live in a player city, the owners of the city design the city in a “Sim City” ske way. Maybe you are somewhere on the city just training, and a sound break.. you look anywhere for enemys, and you see buildings “grown” from the ground. I can tell you that is epic.
If you have not played in a few days, you are wellcome to nice additions to your city, so you do some exploration, looking for the new turrets, buildins, walls and stuff.
A player city in Darkfall can look more awesome than a city in Age of Conan. And wen you realice is *all* player made (but the modelling, of course) you become speechless.
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The biggest problem with user-generated content, is that 90% of users are awful at generating content. I will say though, that the best of the user-generated content is always far more engaging to me than developer created content, and not necessarily because it is better. It just seems like a more natural extension of the world. If a player in a game becomes a sort of Robin Hood, that is far more interesting than a static NPC who gives out Robin Hood quests.
For instance in WoW, joining a PvP battleground was never as exciting to me as encountering a situation where the Alliance was griefing lowbies in a contested zone. That created a dynamic to where the PvP was more than just grinding for points to get armor, it gave it purpose outside of a game that was entirely economy based. That isn’t really user-generated content, but it certainly was a user-generated narrative that was far more interactive than grinding for badges, medallions, points, etc.
Problem is that these are few and far between and since it’s an economy based game, nobody wants to engage, because there is no reward.
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@ bookwormat: Cool. I think I agree with pretty much all of that.
@ jalf (to start with before degenerating into a general rant): “What did the 2/10 mean?” I think there’s a good answer to that one and that’s why I loved the old scoring system that was in place at Eurogamer when the Darkfall review was released. It meant that in the opinion of Ed Zitron it fell into this category: -
It isn’t objective. It’s not hard to measure the quality of a game objectively, it’s down right impossible! I’m not even convinced there’s an objective fact to be measured but if there is it sure a heck can’t be discovered by mortal man. Only fools think review numbers are any more objective then the rest of the review but if that doesn’t make them meaningless, they’re still indicative of (for want of a better word) quality since games reviewers are in general fairly good at giving advice on which games they think the average gamer might enjoy. Now sure for every game some will love it and some with loath it and some games will be more polarising than others and will thus present a harder challenge for the reviewer to pigeon-hole correctly but that doesn’t mean the reviewers opinion in worthless or indicative just because it will be disagreed with. I don’t always agree with review scores, I didn’t much like Half-Life 2 but in spite of that fact, going back to my example, I know that Tom Bramwell has what I consider, my subjective opinion, pretty good taste and so if he says in his subjective opinion (no doubt tempered by some level of professional attempted objectivity but still subjective) that inFamous is a 7 then I know I’m not going to be missing out on an awful lot and it probably isn’t good enough to warrant me buying it never mind the PS3 as well.
As regards what the score should reflect the answer is of course that the score has to be a holistic measure, it has to be an averaging and it surely is. If you were to create a version of Darkfall without any of it’s redeeming features then trivially it wouldn’t merit even a 2. If you made a version that possessed only it’s good qualities then surely it would rank quite highly. Trying to pigeon-hole a game into one of ten boxes will always be a hard task but not one that reviewers often get drastically wrong so the numbers remain a fairly effective guide.
You get towards the less average games like the buggy games, the short games and the cheap games the pigeon-holing job gets harder and harder until you come to something like Blueberry Garden or The Path and I pity people who have to put numbers to them but even then I’d expect the reviewers I trust to come close to my own (as indeed Kieron did with his review of The Path for Eurogamer) so the system very rarely breaks.
The numbers don’t mean an awful lot. No matter how hard you look at them you won’t be able to discern all the information from the full review or any deep insight into the objective qualities of the game but as a subjective shorthand summery that can be taken alongside what else you know about the game and the reviewer to be used as an indication of whether the game the game is worthy of further interest they do a pretty decent job in my opinion.
@ Wisq: Yeah, I’ve thought along similar lines myself but the problem is that although value is what most of us are really interested in it’s actually one of the most subjective measures. I know when I was in my teens and time rich but money poor I used to really value long games that ate up the hours like Fallout 3 does. Now I’m a bit older and time poorer but money richer I find that I’ve a much greater appreciation for shorter games like Mirror’s Edge that I can blast though in a weekend and I find myself almost resenting the lengths of the epic RPGs because they stop me playing so many of the shorter games.
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I don’t play any MMO at the moment, but if I want a tight, scripted experience with well-written characters, I’ll play a singleplayer RPG where I actually AM saving the world, and not World of Warcraft, where I go through the world-saving motions and watch as the guy in queue behind me does exactly the same thing.
It feels so goddamn hollow.
Back in the early days of Ultima Online, there were no quests, no scripting, no characters. It was just a huge sandbox world and the players did whatever the hell they wanted in it. The first time I met a guy with his own castle, in which he had a tamed dragon guarding a huge mound of treasure (surrounded by the severed limbs of named players who had tried to steal from him), I was blown away.
In a singleplayer RPG, that would have been a really minor thing, but this was a human player. You knew he had gone from rags to malevolent overlordery entirely through his own actions in a world full of players trying to carve their own chunk out of the virtual land.
What can I get in World of Warcraft? A shiny hat, maybe? Ridiculously oversized shoulderpads? Fuck that noise.
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Some of the comments being left on the Darkfall forums about Kieron’s review are hilarious. I particularly enjoyed one poster describing it as “insipid wankery”.
A fine piece of work by Mr. Gillen.
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@airtekh:
Yes, it’s clearly *robust* wankery of the first water.
We salute you, Kieron Gillen, for services to wankery.
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*lol*
I have to protect my incompetent colleague, the game is way over my head & not like WOW, so I’ll just write something about masturbation to amuse my 12yr old fanboys and not bother with the game’s system at all. Ohhh and the grind, I tellya. I couldn’t team up & have fun with anybody without that additional 0.1 sword skill.
So it’s really true, Games reviews by corporate whores aren’t worth anything. Even on the second painful attempt trying to hide they aren’t gamers at all, they get it all wrong and are only reporting for their paymasters.
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My favourite is an entire thread titled:
“When does AV start to go after EUROgamer for Slander?”
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Nice review, well written.
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Best excert from EG comment thread: “I relish in the fact that I am not nearly as pathetic as you.”
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Yeh, the “if I ever find out somebody was lying” bit is vital to this piece, I think. I also suspect it was a human (or technical) mistake along the way, but if it does turn out to have been either side lying, they deserve to be pilloried.
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I not that Ed Zitron hasn’t written anything for Eurogamer since.
Perhaps that’s Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell’s unique way of showing his full confidence in a journalist?
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Reply to antonymous
Oh christ they’ve breached the compound.
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Damn! A scout found RPS! Kill him so he can’t report back!
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In passing, gentlefolk: I’m off for about 10 days, so am only going to be sporadically around. I’d appreciate if you don’t rile anyone who comes in from the AV community. For all the reasons I describe in the above piece, some will be a bit angry and it’s not worth making an Us And Them about it.
KG
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Perhaps that’s Tom “Tom Bramwell” Bramwell’s unique way of showing his full confidence in a journalist?
I don’t remember Tom Bramwell saying he had full confidence in him. Did he?
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But if we’re nice to Darkfall players, won’t they accuse us of being carebears…?
(Note please that I do totally agree.)
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More directly on the topic, the review/article were really interesting reads, but I can’t say it was a good review. Like Eve and Ultima Online and Wurm Online and others, it’s a game built entirely around player interactions, and the only player interactions really covered in the entire huge wordy expanse were ‘This guy ran at me and killed me and I died’.
It’s like reviewing Dungeons & Dragons (the pen-and-paper version) based entirely on your initial read of the book and rolling the dice a couple of times. Sure, you’ve seen the fundamentals and know the rules, and perhaps have figured out some of the structural perks and flaws of the system, but you haven’t actually played the game yet.
Perhaps MMOs like this, which are more like flexible virtual worlds than traditional ‘games’ (World of Warcraft/Everquest/etc are all pretty much singleplayer RPGs, but you only get to play as one character, rather than control the whole party) would do better to have regular, purely subjective player diaries (with suggestions from readers nudging the writer towards different aspects of the game) rather than reviews. They really seem pretty much unreviewable.
I mean, hell, based on what I played near launch, I’d have given Eve Online somewhere around a 4/10, too.
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protip: you have to rebind keys in any PC game in order to be competitive, and this is doubly true for MMO’s.
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Brilliantly written and very even handed, all in all a very good job under very bad circumstances. It’s a shame you had to put a score at the end at all, actually, in many ways the piece would stand better without a number cluttering things up.
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@negativeedge: nonsense, I’m reasonably good at Team Fortress 2 without rebinding the keys once – because the defaults generally make sense. It depends on what you mean by “competitive” of course – what fraction of the top X% are you referring to?
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I agree with Aoanla I haven’t had to rebind keys in a game since quake
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Reply to KG
Ok, I promise there will be no first use of C-Bombs from me. Personally I respect their games right to exist and hope they’ll respect our rights not to like a game.
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Ahhhh Ultimate Online, how I miss thee. I like Eve a lot I just haven’t been able to afford to pay for an mmo for a long time (4 years) I’ve played the free 14 days thing like 4 times lol.
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Bhazor, waht are you talking about?
It’s a real bad review with almost no factual information.
KG let his account idle for half of the time and didn’t try to do anything interesting in the game. All the while his ADD made it difficult for him to remember the button he’d pressed two seconds ago, or something.
And all that to protect an equally incompetent ‘pro reviewer’ and his company.
Only great thing here is to see these media whores command all their pimpfenredguardfanbois like you. But most ppl will still be turned off, promise :)
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It wasn’t the negative reviews, or the scary behavior on the forums, but the fact that you had a one or two hour window every once in a while to actually purchase the game that put me off the whole thing entirely. It’s probably just as well, as I’d likely be too much of a carebear when even purchasing the game is for the hardcore only.
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Very nice. It’s been great to see websites and magazines alike take a different approach to reviewing MMOs in the last few years- leaning towards repeated reviews/looks at of the game as a whole instead of just launch and expansion reviews.
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I have no great interest in Darkfall, but there was a bit of ‘I’m going to be writing less about games, probably’. This makes me sad and quite lonely inside. If there’s one person who brings perspective, understanding and skill to game reviews, it’s Kieron Gillen. We need more Kierons, not fewer. Can’t the comic people just accept their medium is dead and become PC gamers?
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@antonymous:
“Almost no factual information?” Well, I suppose it wasn’t full of stats and stuff. It didn’t list lots of races or monsters or go into detail about crafting or how big the map is or how many people are playing it or whatever. So in that sense, sure. It doesn’t have any factual information, and it doesn’t need it. This is the web– if I want to know that stuff, google is in the title bar of my browser and I can go soak up stats all I want. There’s no reason EuroGamer should waste space with stats, and any review that just lists stuff like that is wasting my time. Who cares, honestly? What I want to know is how fun a game is and if it fits with what I like to do when I play games. The review fulfills THAT criteria perfectly, and I think, from what I’ve read about the game, gives it an easier ride than perhaps it deserves.
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It’s also worth stressing that absolutely everyone I met in game in Darkfall was pretty lovely. I wouldn’t let the people who turn up in the thread turn you off if you suspect you may be One Of The Darkfallers.
KG
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See, I keep being tempted because I DO like the idea. I think WoW is kind of wimpy– a glorified chat system with pretty graphics and combat. (And if they have to add other games that you can play when the game you’re playing gets boring, well. What does that say about it?) I do wish there was a way to try it out without having to pay up front.
I’m glad the forum trolls aren’t representative…
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Seconded on the trolls non representative.
I figure if a game gets a bit niche already, it’s definitely for the best if the limited group of people playing tends to be the group you’d hang around with anyway.
Also: Excellent journalism. And I really need to pick up Godhunter. Think it’ll show up in trade later, in case I can’t find #1?
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Bret: Honestly, dunno.
KG
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based on the wikipedia page the game actaully sounds awesome.
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Bloody hell, great review. While knowing nothing about the game myself you really managed to relay a lot of meaningful information about it. Wish more people adopted your style of writing reviews.
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@aoanla
Well, it is maybe a little different for FPSes since they have become largely standardized. TF2 is, all told, a very simple game, too (NOTE: SIMPLE DOES NOT MEAN BAD. IT DOES NOT MEAN IT TAKES NO SKILL. I LOVE TF2), with a purposely limited skillset for each class. And hey, even in TF2 I rebound all the Spy stuff.
But seriously, this is a weak argument against an MMO. MMO designers know you are going to break their control schemes. They know you are going to destroy their UI. The baseline stuff is very basic because there is way too much going on on the player’s end for the developers to cater to all of it without it being a complete mess. Even Blizzard, who if they know nothing else know streamlined design and engaging aesthetics, have a terrible UI and keybinding system for WoW. Hell, if WoW pretty much everything defaults to being unbound. Most casual WoW players click every ability on their screen. Real players have arcane bindings for all 50 things they hit over the course of advanced play. That’s just how it goes. As these games live longer, the developers patch in some of the added functionality that players have adopted as standard.
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Never had to rebind anything in WoW and I certainly didn’t have to click on every ability all you have to do is drop the skill on the bar and push the number that relates to it, big freaking whoop O.o That is not excuse for having run bound to shift and having shift also change the quick bar when you hit shift and the short cut. There is no excuse for such a huge error. I mean has no one ever play tested the game even once to find that this might be a huge conflict if you’re trying to run and use skills at the same time ? O.o
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It sounds like what Darkfall is trying to do is combine the harshness and inaccessibility of EVE with a fantasy setting.
What I wish someone would do is take the player generated stories, the emergent gameplay of EVE and adapt that, in a different setting and a more accessible (yes, carebear) way. Now that would be a good game.
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Still have fond memories of creating a pirate group in like 5 seconds of the public chat window and raiding some of those asian ISK farmers. They had a bunch of those huge ore ships and were mining in a low security area so we got in our little freighters and robbed them blind for about 2 hours before they noticed (I guess whoever was running the bot or whatever came back finally and realized all their public containers were empty)
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I’m not a Darkfaller but the review is still good for nothing. British yellow press.
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@antonymous: I find that hard to believe.
Also, have you noticed in the Darkfall forum’s thread how they are making out that EG changed the score, and that the review should be six or seven. Shows how much score matters and how little the review does.
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@Sonic Goo: A Tale In The Desert. Might be worth checking out the 24-hour trial…
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Good write-up. I’d actually love to see KG review more MMO’s so that most of them can be exposed for the “meh” excuses for games that they are.
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Read your review Kieron and absolutely loved it. I had no idea there was this controversy with EG/Aventurine. Made for some fairly entertaining reading =)
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@Railick
Then you weren’t very good at WoW. Sorry.
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negativedge: The complaint is simple. Running is a critical action. Switching weapons is also a critical action. Trying to use these two critical actions in unison causes a problem that can ultimately lead to failure by the player, through no direct fault of the player, while trying to do nothing more than play the game in a way that seems to be intended.
If the default control scheme for Quake 3 meant you couldn’t move and change weapon at the same time, or jump and fire at the same time, it would ruin the experience for many players, except for the few who stuck with it further and played around the problems, or realised it could be easily fixed in the control bindings. There’s a pretty huge difference between modifying controls to gain the competitive edge, and modifying controls so you’re able to play the game in the first place.
But players don’t exist to provide fixes or workarounds for bugs, or polish their own gaming experience. That’s what developers should be doing.
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Ahhh Mister Gillen, you wode-eyed, disco biscuit,game mad thing. you.
y’know, I’ve followed you all through t he NGJ thing, and even when you laid it aside/renounced it, I tought you wer e essentially right. And in this piece, I think it shines through once more. Congratulations.
I think it’s a creidt to your art taht you are willing to risk losing an audience in the pursuit of what you feel is the best possible treatment of a game. credit be damned. The rael majic happens when you drag us back from clicking away, and get us to staay long enough to ride the merry go round, chase th edragon and buy a ticket.
Short form?: Nice review. Welll aimed. Might be a bit DUNK. Londen Pride. Good brewu.
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Saddens me when I think of the younger days of gaming, were true gamers trudged thru hours of text (D&D and MUDS) to be the best of the best.
Now I see watered down versions of “Think for Me” games. I suppose the “Want it Now” mentality is the dominant aspect of the human species at this point in time.
Seriously? The controls are the least of the learning curve people endure to master a game. You are complaining about the very nature of gaming, to understand, master, and obliterate the opposition.
You are a reviewer and as such I would expect you to review a game based in merit to the target audience.
Darkfall is more than a game, it is also a platform where like minded individuals gather together and form bonds of friendship and enemies for life.
Darkfall is not a game for people to conquer in a month or even a year. Darkfall is a game designed around groups of people that gather together and share the same ideals and pursue them with a passion.
Many gamers that Darkfall is designed around play the same game together for two or more years. This reflects itself in every aspect of the game, numbers will trump skill the majority of the time.
You never mentioned raids or sieges, the heart and soul of Darkfall. The thrill of protecting your collective property from being taken over by the other group who decided they wanted said property. The challenge of amassing all your friends for a push to expand your borders. The agony of losing everything you earned thru sweat and tears. You didn’t touch on the support cast of your friends whose trust you earned help you thru your darkest online moments.
Coming from someone who had to learn how to rig up dual modems to get a good baud rate to login and play a game. Only to have to script simple things such as looting corpses or casting mana missiles, I say to you about your complaint of the interface.. HUH?
You have a gift to sling words around and get peoples attention. Ego or not, Darkfall should have taught you that someone else around the next corner can take you out. Use the gift you have and enlighten the people who read your words and not spew forth a word count.
Put a disclaimer on your reviews stating this is a pvp title it may not be for the weak of heart or maybe state that this is a pve game and not for the bloodthirsty bastards roaming around out there looking for the next kill.
You are a writer, next time hire a gamer and get his views and opinions, then transform them to the poetry you command on paper. Whatever you do, stay true to gamers or we will literally devour you. ;)
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Zaf, you are not talking about Darkfall, you are talking about people.
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“You are a reviewer and as such I would expect you to review a game based in merit to the target audience.”
That’s not the purpose of a review, nor the job of a reviewer.
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@Zafnib: I didn’t realize Darkfall actually a religion and not a computer game.
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@Zafnib: I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you may be a Darkfall player.
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@Zafnib: “Seriously? The controls are the least of the learning curve people endure to master a game. You are complaining about the very nature of gaming, to understand, master, and obliterate the opposition.”
But it does help if they’re easy to master, especially if you’re going to be investing time into the game.
And I agree with blaargh, your post reminded me of a religious teaching. :o
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I don’t know much more than the gist of Darkfall, but have a passing interest in picking it up. Your “review” didn’t help me at all. It summarizes as a pages-long complaint that you couldn’t wrap your head around the controls, and tells me almost nothing about the game itself.
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It’s interesting that the most common complaint vs Gillen is that he somehow “isn’t a gamer” – perhaps says something about the self-image of the people who think they are.
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You’d think namedropping Dwarf Fortress would garner some responses, but it’s obvious it went way over the heads of these self-proclaimed “hardcore” people
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I hate to say it, but game design is supposed to have moved on since the days of text games, in that all the various elements in a game are supposed to be streamlined to some extent so that the player can focus on enjoyment rather than chores (It’s possible to argue that the fun in text adventures is the guessing game of finding the right phrase/command, but how many people will find that fun now that the novelty has worn off?).
If the core aim of the game is the mass PvP aspect of seiges, then surely the other game elements (Including any weakness in the interface, no matter how minor those weakness’ are) shouldn’t get in the way of this? Thats one complaint I ended up placing against a text MUD, if the combat basically boils down to having the best automation scripts setup to respond to all eventualities in exactly the right way, then the game basically boils down to being a programming & text parsing challenge rather than an actual game of moment to moment decision making.
One thing that hasn’t kept up however is gamers attitudes, if you like a certain type of game thats fine, if someone else doesn’t like that type of game, that is also fine because it says more about that person than it does about the game (IE he/she should go play a game that has a style more to the persons liking).
What I don’t think is fine is this idea that if someone doesn’t like a game, that this is automatically like a summons to respond, if you like the game does it really matter if other people don’t like it? One thing I’ve noticed is that this whole “must respond/retaliate” habit always ends up creating an us versus them mentality that then goes on to forever dominate the behaviour of a gaming community.
There has to be a point where you just let go, shrug and go back to playing the game safe in the knowledge that you’ve already found a community of like mined people to play with.
If you’re worried the review might scare away people? Chances are the review will only scare away the people who wouldn’t like the game anyway, surely theres not much harm in that? The people who would like the game will be able to read the review and pick out that there are elements worth trying out… The people who only read the score probably aren’t worth your time, as they’ll be the people who don’t have the patience to defeat any interface or even keybinding issues that might pop up in a game.
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Zafnib:
Three points:
Firstly, a reviewer can only ever give an account of their own experience of a game. Trying to “second guess” what a “real” experience is is fraught with difficulty and potential for lies – look at what has happened historically whenever (rarely) a reviewer has reviewed a preview copy of a game and then decided not to mention a glaring bug because they’ve been promised that “it’ll be fixed in the release”. Often it isn’t, and this results in the reviewer being compromised and the review being useless. Similarly for trying to imagine how a “real person” would react to a game.
So, a review can only be about the reviewer’s experience.
Secondly, in your pseudo-religious wording, you’re essentially describing *any* persistent massively multiplayer game, or indeed, any multiplayer game in general (in the metagame space, though). Surely you realise that it is impossible for someone to spend 6 months playing a game intensively for a review? Both because no publication would wait that long for a review, and because it wouldn’t serve the purpose of a review in the end, since you’d be selecting only people who liked the game enough to play it for 6 months intensively to review it. Whilst *you* enjoy Darkfall and have invested much time in it, this means that you are, by definition, not a good person to write a review of it – you are not an “average” gamer. This is a problem for MMO review in general, as Kieron, amongst others has noted, since fans of any game you can play forever will always be annoyed that the reviewer “hasn’t played enough for cool thing X” (and yet playing enough to do cool thing X would result in the reviewer not being representative of the public any more).
Thirdly, as I have already hinted at in the previous point – your use of the word “gamer” is strongly biased. Apparently, you are using it as a synonym for “person who agrees with me about games”, in the same way that “patriot” gets used a lot by people on any side of a political debate in the USA. In the sense that everyone else uses it, “gamer” means “someone who plays a lot of computer games” – you might want to consider that, since Kieron is someone who has been playing computer games for quite a while, he counts as such a person. (Hell, look back a couple of days on RPS, and you’ll find the articles each RPS writer wrote about the formative games in their life. Read them, and then tell me that none of them are “gamers”.)
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To be fair, most of them do have their heads in a very dark and moist place.
“You are a writer, next time hire a gamer and get his views and opinions,”
So rather than an eloquent critique of the game, we get “this suxxors rofl !!!one!!eleven”? No thanks. I don’t see why being a writer or a gamer is mutually exclusive, nor do I see why being one rather than the other would necessarily mean you had a different point of view.
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Not every Darkfall player is one of these over-compensating hardcore PvPers, some of us just find it a really interesting, player-driven game without feeling the need to ‘dominate’.
Darkfall is a dream,/b> game, not everything works in its implementation, but the ideals it’s trying to achieve are so far above anything else currently available that I think it’s worth getting around the dodgy controls and crude new player experience.
MMOs are so over-developed these days, all these systems in place that try to totally eliminate frustration. In doing so they’ve destroyed the magic of being one of thousands and making just cool stuff happen with some friends. It’s bizarre that just having a seemless, uninstanced online world is such a thrill to experience in Darkfall. Just being able to wander off in any direction and explore is an absurdly rare thing.
Some other brilliant stuff:
-No floating nametags
-Bot-style monsters rather than your usual 1-dimensional MMO mobs
-No reliance on shitty little ‘Quests’ as a main activity
-Mounted combat! It’s insane that this is so rare in the genre
I find it quite sad that games as pedestrian as Warhammer get so much attention from sites like this, while passionately developed, niche stuff like Darkfall that’s actually interesting to examine gets so little coverage. Granted, Darkfall’s had almost no marketing. But that’s an excuse for the end user, not for journalists.
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Raff – and, if you read Kieron’s review, and his commentary which this thread is a comment thread to, you’ll see that he *agrees with you*.
His issues were with some terrible presentation – honestly, the review even compares Darkfall with EVE, which is a pretty good compliment.
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to be fair I think the score was a little low given the content of the review but wait I just mentioned a review score fuck it’s all over now.
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Larington: Yes but these people have devoted their lives to this game, to the point of religious fanaticism. Giving it a 4/10 is like giving their entire life’s accomplishments a 4/10. It’s a personal attack on who they are dammit! The obvious reaction is to attack the reviewer right back – call him a noob, say he’s not hardcore enough, that he’s not a gamer, that he’s a console gamer (wtf?), that he’s only *gasp* a writer!
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I think I’m gonna give Darkfall a try.
I wanna see what all the fuss is about.
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@Neut: True that.
Maybe it’s justified, I’m not really sure on that one, might never be. I seriously doubt I’ll ever be able to regard it as ‘right’ though.
That said, I’d be tempted to inverse that number, it’s a 2 out of 10 review but they’ve stuck with the game? Lets call that an 8 out of 10 for effort and ability in enjoying the game then! Umm, maybe. I dunno, that might come off as sounding rather patronising, which isn’t the aim.
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Superbly written review.
As mentioned above, arguments regarding coverage of MMO’s being given the same treatment that single player titles do have some merit. Personally, I know within an hour or less if I like a single player title, and will almost always play through to it’s conclusion if I do like it. With MMO’s, 5 hours seems generous for a first impression, let alone the ~20 for a full review. I’m likely to give a MMO 1-2 at max before forming an opinion.
If the community, and your interaction with, must be an integral aspect of the decision to enjoy a game or not, then it seems like the game itself has failed and your paying for an interactive chat room. A MMO should (imho) be able to be reviewed legitimately along a similar vein as a SP title for obvious parallels (GUI, aesthetic, bugs) but also because most MMO’s *are* a single player game until you consciously decide to integrate yourself into the community via guild, chat, party system or forum etc. How many of us start a MMO with a social network already established? Sure it happens, but it seems rare.
The basic tenants of Darkfall didn’t strike me as something I was interested on the surface (I’m too carebear) but a glowing, positive review full of praise could have changed my mind to give it a try. Today I still likely won’t, and I think the review is far more balanced and fair then it could have been and still been within reasonable journalistic standards.
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MMOs require so much energy on the part of the player, so much time, you want things to be just right, or close to being just right. WoW in TBC was pretty damn close.
I can spend a lot of time and a lot of energy eating bullshit to discover the fun game that supposedly lies beneath, or I can jump right back into TF2.
Bullshit eaters are a pretty small demographic.
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Re: “user generated stuff”
Is a sim-city-ske control over what is designed. I think theres no way to create something awnfull. Maybe suboptimal, maybe ilogical.. what I have see is a tendence to build something awesome and usefull. If you live in a city, you know what you need and what you want. You don’t build crates that block the frontal door…
The “but user lack creativity and create awnfull stuff” don’t fit with this.
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Yeah, a guy who’s been reviewing PC games for a decade done a mod for Deus Ex is a “console noob”, supposedly.
There’s nothing wrong with liking something that’s a bit rubbish. I love those really cheap microwavable kebabs but I wouldn’t start badgering a food critic who rated them low.
P.
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Christ, I was a bit pissed last night.
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aoanla:
Seems some people forget what a review is about. When people read reviews they want to hear about the good, the bad, and the ugly.
No mention of warfare, no mention of sieges, not even a word about sea battles. Not a peep about crafting armor or weapons, no mention of mounted combat. All we get with the review in question is “The controls suck”.
A review should contain more information so that even if the reviewer doesn’t like it, others can make a decision based on the information presented.
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I suspect too many players confuse a game’s community with the game itself. A reviewer can and should not review the community, no matter how nice they may be.
A negative review of the game isn’t a criticism of it’s players, at most I’d say it’s an indication of how many people are likely to enjoy it, and guess what: Darkfall doesn’t have 8 000 000 players.
And that is fine, enjoy your hardcore game with it’s obscure interface but don’t get riled up because the immense majority of game players can’t be arsed to work through the sludge to get to the shiny bits of your world.
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@Zafnib
But that’s the thing. There’s no way Kieron could have experienced all that stuff in 20 hours of play. From what I know most people don’t get to participate in sieges and sea battles in the first month of playing. So unless all that stuff is immediately available, he sticks to what he can see: clunky controls, anarchic PK, with few redeeming features. That’s the nature of the beast.
He isn’t some all-knowing superman who can at a glance see everything the game has to offer. and judge it from his high seated position.
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Zafnib
You’ve got quite some skill in missing the point.
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Also, I suspect this hilarious “writers have no business reviewing games” meme will last for years. I’m sure as hell going to perpetrate it.
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@Zafnib:
Apparently you didn’t read the same review that I did. *Yes*, Kieron mentioned that the controls are crap. He *also* mentioned that the experience-gain system was relatively innovative, that he genuinely experienced moments of real panic and sense of danger in the game, that the item acquirement process made sense (crap mobs have basic items etc), and even *compared the game to EVE Online*, a game which started out with a famously hard-to-get-into interface and design but has now become something on the order of a cult classic (and is usually regarded as being one of the few non-WoW-like MMORPGs to actually be successful).
I’m not sure why you’re obsessing over the negative point so much.
(And, indeed, apparently his experience was fairly similar to that of anyone else in their first 10 to 20 hours of play… so you’re criticising him for writing about a representative experience of someone starting to play the game?)
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@aoanla:
I agree he touched on a few points, but a real review is something that is researched. Pick up an old review from the 80′s. They researched the entire game, even if they didn’t play the entire game. I want information in a review, that is the whole point of a review.
He gave himself away when he implied that it took longer to write the review than he did researching the game.
@Psychopomp:
You sure about that?
@alseT:
Well said.
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@Jim:
That was my reaction. I kind of hope that it’s people being ignorant of KG’s games-writing CV, or even just madly believing that he made it all up, rather than actually thinking that that’s not enough to count as a gamer.
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@Zafnib
Absolutely certain.
It’s not a reviewers job to tell you what he thinks the target audience would think. It’s a reviewers job to tell you what *he* thinks and has experienced.
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The most ironic thing is that this is all free publicity for the game.
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Au contraire – Kieron was clearly bought out by the sinister Darkfall cabal.
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A nice review. Sounds like Darkfall = MMO Daggerfall.
(wonder if it will be loved as much as Daggerfall is now in 10 years?)
No interest in the game, but i read the original review after the kerfuffle… and it was pretty bad. this review was interesting and funny, and gave a pretty good insight.
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@Zafnib “No mention of warfare, no mention of sieges, not even a word about sea battles. Not a peep about crafting armor or weapons, no mention of mounted combat.”
He did mention crafting. And mounted combat IIRC. Siege is pointless; it’s been done better and the system in Darkfall is pretty rudimentary. Sea Battles I’ve not been involved in so I can’t comment, beyond pointing out that if they were *that* important to you there are sufficient pirate themed MMO’s out there which by their very nature will offer a more involved naval combat than Darkfall will.
@bill “A nice review. Sounds like Darkfall = MMO Daggerfall.”
Pretty much nail on the head. There’s some good ideas in there, but the implementation is a little off. When released however Daggerfall had the advantage of being the only game of it’s type; Darkfall I guess is only unique in terms of the MMO market (as far as I know), but with plenty of MMORPG’s to choose from, or indeed plenty of single player games which offer roughly the same type of gameplay, it’s flaws are more readily apparent.
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I’d rather read a review by a writer than a gamer.
If the writer happens to be a gamer, even better.
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I love the review, and i love reading the Darkfall forum responses. Seems like there’s a lot of “carebearism” internally over there in regards to having a solid reality check as to the quality of the game they are playing. It seems a pretty even split of “he’s basically right” and “WTF LOL [LOTS OF SPELLING ERRORS AND TERMS THAT MAKE SENSE ONLY TO HARDCORE PLAYERS OF THE GAME AND ALSO SOME TALK ABOUT HOW AMERICANS ARE MORE HARDCORE THAN EUROS AND ALSO WTF IS EUROGAMER ANYWAY LOL LOL LOL]. I have followed Darkfall quite closely through a friend of mine who now plays it more than any other MMO, but the stories he tells me about it are sort of half-jokingly self referential. Like the term “naked zerging” makes me laugh every time, and stories of hordes of naked men rushing up vertical hills during sieges. Something tells me if Kieron had gotten to that siege level play he would have even more ammunition against the game.
I love the idea of an anarchic MMO. EVE does it admirably, while Darkfall just LEAPS off the deep end. It sounds utterly mad, and i applaud it.
The review is fantastic, and joyously meta. Another reason KG is my Roger Ebert of games journalism. He can hate something and warn me vehemently against it, yet still pique my interest as to what it’s like. That’s the highest possible accolade i can think of for a review.
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It’s interesting that the most common complaint vs Gillen is that he somehow “isn’t a gamer” – perhaps says something about the self-image of the people who think they are.
This.
This is key. This is CENTRAL to what holds gaming back. Not necessarily the existence of gamer culture in and of itself, but the closed-mindedness of it, the dogmatic need to fit into categories and blah blah blah.
Oh, and good review, Kieron, very tastefully handled. Enjoy your vacation!
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@Sunjammer:
Don’t insult Kieron by comparing him to Roger Ebert. No one deserves that.
Honestly I have yet to see any of the Darkfall trolls come up with any arguments besides Ad Hominem and Ad Populum.
If the controls are bad at the beginning, they will remain bad. You still have three separate modes. When I tried Darkfall out, I was hoping for… not what it was. Perhaps something like an Oblivion-MMO.
It’d be safe to say I didn’t like it. It has zero polish. It can be pretty, but the controls are arcane. I should not have to press a button to take my weapon out. I should just be able to attack. Why is there thinking involved?
They honestly took a step backwards in UI design, and the UI is how you interact with the game.
So Darkfall may be your cup of tea, but his review is fair to the general audience. Attacking him, the person, is inane and makes you look like worse than an idiot.
The most vocal of us are usually the least educated.
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On the other hand, I’ve always tended to regard default controls as more of a “suggestion” than anything else. As game controls ramp up in complexity, so do the control schemes, and what’s convenient and intuitive to a player depends a lot on their personal style.
So while I’m working through the first few hours of a game, I almost always end up restructuring everything dramatically, fiddling around and molding the control scheme into a shape that can function by some manner of reflex, and takes advantage of some established bits of muscle memory.
This happens so much that unintuitive and confusing control schemes rarely bother me; if I don’t get them immediately, they’re getting tossed and replaced with something that makes sense. What DOES enrage me is when I can’t do this, because the controls aren’t customizable. Even if they’re otherwise sort of workable, they’re probably not optimal, and the game’s inability to let me fiddle with keybindings is an unforgivable level of shoddiness.
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@Zafnib Pick up an old review from the 80’s. They researched the entire game, even if they didn’t play the entire game.
Back in the 80′s all game reviews were of single player games (as were almost all of them in the 90′s and most of them in the 00′s). With a single player game it is possible (not every very difficult) to play an entire game before you review it. This simply isn’t feasable, let alone possible for a MMO.
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Roger Ebert is a damn good film reviewer. Even if he is a douchebag about games.
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Kieron isn’t a gamer? What the fuck?
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“Roger Ebert is a damn good film reviewer. Even if he is a douchebag about games.”
Except he isn’t. He was unable to follow the plot or understand what the PREDATOR was doing in Predator. They fucking say why he is there, and Ebert was still baffled.
The Matrix films confused Ebert to no end. Ebert was unable to tell where things were taking place.
This has nothing to do with his opinion of the films. Its simply that, very plain and obvious character or story elements completely escape his grasp time and time again. I have a hard time trusting the opinion of a man who can’t understand stories that I was capable of following as a six year old boy.
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I salute you Mr KG :-)
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An armoured orc ran up to me, two-handed sword in the air. I immediately backed off expecting trouble (I’m not a total newb, y’know?), but he waved. I waved back. We danced around a little.
“Let’s go kill some Goblins,” he cheerfully said.
That bit is so sweet.
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Urine-drenched fellatio.
You’ve been watching German porn, haven’t you, Kieron?
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That bit at the end about the Orc – that’s what sometimes brings a lump to my throat. MMOs can make you cynical, and meeting another player, doing some silly emotes, jumping around and then going off and doing something together is a beautiful moment in gaming.
When things like that happen to me I always feel a little strange: slightly emotional, protective of my new acquaintance’s character and really very happy indeed.
But why are these encounters the exception to the rule?
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“AND ALSO SOME TALK ABOUT HOW AMERICANS ARE MORE HARDCORE THAN EUROS”
Did they really get into that?
Because if I’m not mistaken… isn’t Darkfall a European game? :p
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Apparently, only Americans are “hardcore” enough to spend a silly amount of hours on a game it’s painful to play.
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[i]That bit at the end about the Orc – that’s what sometimes brings a lump to my throat. MMOs can make you cynical, and meeting another player, doing some silly emotes, jumping around and then going off and doing something together is a beautiful moment in gaming.[/i]
I had the same reaction. MMO player bases are almost always so much cooler and more fun people than the impression one can get from forums and web sites, it’s nice to see that pointed out for once. It seems to me like most of the gaming press doesn’t bother.
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Gah… screwed up my italics tags. I rule.
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Re: “Some games play games like a religion”
This make me *need* something like ‘religion reviews’. People out here writting about religion and giving numerical scores.
“Cristianism don’t make much sense, but If you screwed, you can undo all the errors just says ‘sorry’. It has the pope stuff, but is not untrusive. Overall.. good graphics, nice music, a 7/10″
“Islam is kinda cool if you know it. It was created after cristianism, so we can say is more modern. On the other part, is full of strange rules, that only make sense for people of the desert. And *has not graphics at all*. Is a textmode religion, images of people are forbidden. And drink. 2/4″.
“Hebrew religion is really hardcore. It has like 600 laws (no..is not a joke). To be a hebrew your mother has to be a hebres (see, hardcore?). Is really hard to be one. But once you are hebrew, the community is great!. These guys have a whole country to play, much like starcraft has korea. Is a popular religion in USA and europe. But soo niche… 4/10″.
Imagine the responses to THIS.
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“f***ng noob! he’s not even a theologian, he’s a writer!!!!one!!!eleven!!”
“How can you write an accurate review if you’ve only been worshipping God for eight years? He didn’t even mention the eternal salvation, bodily resurrection or beast of revelations, just kept going on about all those crusades and witch hunts. Biased m********r”
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Jacques: Well that tears it. Us Europeans should just leave Darkfall to the Americans and get back to playing Uncompromisingly Technical Train/Lorry/Digger Simulation 2… You know, the carebear games.
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“But why are these encounters the exception to the rule?”
That’s because actual Roleplaying is kinda hard hard you are running for your life most of the time and/or got lost in charts to figure out how to play the combat part.
That’s pretty much why MMO or not RPGs are divided into to “Players Focusing on Combat and Munchkining” and “Roleplaying Weirdos”. Because your average player is spending so much time memorizing controls, stats and strategies has no time/energy left to spend the tiniest bit of effort to talk in character. You’d feel more bonded to a player saying “There are Goblins threatening this village, can you help me!” then “Wanna farm goblinz pls heal okk3?”.
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[i]I had the same reaction. MMO player bases are almost always so much cooler and more fun people than the impression one can get from forums and web sites, it’s nice to see that pointed out for once. It seems to me like most of the gaming press doesn’t bother.[/i]
I dunno. That’s true for some games – for example, I think Everquest 2 has a pretty amiable community for the most part – but in other games, World of Warcraft for example, the general body of players is every bit as bad as the stereotypes (and its own forums) make it out to be.
But that’s just my personal experience.
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“Pick up an old review from the 80’s. They researched the entire game, even if they didn’t play the entire game.”
I remember the 80s, and I remember reading “Your Sinclair”. I do not recall it having the rigorous research methods of a scientist. In fact, reviews in those days tended to be pretty short, since games on the whole were far less complex.
P.
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One interesting thing i took from the game was that it’d be really easy to fix a lot of these things. The game has been in development, beta testing and release for a long time.. i can’t believe they haven’t re-bound the default keys in all that time.
And stopping people running up vertical hills and making a small bit of useful documentation aren’t something that’d take much time or effort.
PS/ It should be noted that he was using the key issue as an example of the game’s issues, not marking the game based purely on it’s key bindings.
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couple of points of feedback to all this informed commentary.
I hadn’t really heard of Darkfall until shortly before it shipped. I lol’ed when I read the feature list because it seemed too good to be true. I thought I’d try it at some point but I didn’t buy it for months. I played eu-1 for 3 weeks and now na-1 for a week. I don’t think I qualify in most people’s book as a “fanboi” as everyone seems to assume is the entire player base of Darkfall.
Great game. I don’t see any other mmo even attempting to be what Darkfall is right now. Mortal Online still has lots of code to write before it tries. Eve is a great game for some but the lack of twitch is terrible for me.
I personally will NOT be playing another AUTOTARGET game. This alone is a great feature among many in Darkfall.
So to the keybindings question. Why I would let a hotkey rebind get in the way of enjoying this great game? Maybe some super raw newbs would but most of us now how to adapt pc games to our styles. The weapon switching bits are by design.
There are multiple parts of this game that are just intentionally not trivial. Autoloot is off, it takes time and you are helpless while looting or fiddling with inventory. Travel is slow unless you have -expensive- rare drops from pve mobs. Killing mobs is hard. Killing players is hard.
Most of the players I’ve talked to in game really like the fact that you can climb mountains. It’s not vertical slopes at all, its about what you would be able to with a bit of handwork in the real world. More immersive not to be hemmed in like a rat in cage. World is huge fun to explore top to bottom.
Are you sensing a pattern? The point is not to make everything arcane and unintuitive for a wow neophyte. The point is to provide a challenging environment for a seasoned mmo or fps player to master.
Think Arma2 vs TF2, each has their place. So does Darkfall, but most of you will not ever figure that out.
Ok I’m going back to building my city with my clan, enjoy peggle you scrubs ;)
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IL-2 Sturmovik provides a “challenging environment for a seasoned player to master” and it’s nowhere near as charmless or obtuse as Darfall.
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@Diogo
By obtuse you mean you never mastered how to switch your weapons.
There comes a time in every Darkfall players early career in which they have an hours worth of goblin loot in their bags and they get jumped by a Player Killer.
Everyone spazzes out the first time. Wrong weapon, can’t kite well, can’t heal and flails.
There are two responses-
1- “OMFG DARKFALL IS SO OBTUSE”
2- “OMFG I NEED TO GET BETTER AT THAT”
I picked door number 2.
Kieron and yourself seem to have picked door number 1.
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@Adam
No, that’s not what Diego, or Kieron said at all.
Diego showed an example of a hardcore game, that avoided being obtuse.
If you’d actually pay attention, and read the entire review, you’d see Kieron found more fault with the game then it being obtuse.
If you were as hardcore as you think you are, you would have recognized Dwarf Fortress as a sign that Kieron’s not going to drop a game because it’s obtuse.
But, as is always the case, people who use the word “scrub,” are never as hardcore as they think they are.
You’re not a hardcore gamer. Playing obtuse games doesn’t make you a hardcore gamer. Playability is a factor in quality, and if you even try to argue that, you’re a masochist.
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@Psychopomp
lol Where did I refer to myself as hardcore again? I missed that…maybe it’s just you?
“”"As a Dwarf Fortress veteran, wrestling with oblique control systems isn’t the problem – it’s marrying these sorts of controls with a real-time action game that demands fluidity. If you’re stuck trying to remember which exact combination of buttons are required to do the task in hand, it’s not exactly conducive playing the bally thing.”"”
He found it too challenging to deal with a new control scheme in a game that demanded realtime and he quit.
Instead of practicing it a bit (doesn’t take that much really), maybe remapping a key or two and feeling some sense of accomplishment when it started to work he quit (then gave the game a 4).
Have you even played Darkfall?
BTW – Truth be told, I’m a sadist :D
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Kieron Gillen, you have done a great review. That’s all I can say.
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@Adam
“lol Where did I refer to myself as hardcore again? I missed that…maybe it’s just you?”
You don’t have to explicitly say something, for it to be obvious.
“enjoy peggle you scrubs,” alone is more than enough proof, let alone the many other examples is that post alone.
“Instead of practicing it a bit (doesn’t take that much really), maybe remapping a key or two and feeling some sense of accomplishment when it started to work he quit (then gave the game a 4).”
Yet again, you act as if that was his only complaint.
In addition, there’s no “practicing,” this. The control scheme is *bad,* and any time I have to rework the entire thing just to play the game, the developers are incompetent. If you can’t get something as key as playability down, you’ve got a problem.
“Have you even played Darkfall?”
Yes, and it’s an obtuse, charmless mess. Much like EVE was at lauch. Unlike EVE, it’s a good idea to walk into a fight *naked,* which is reflective of far larger problems in the games design.
When I want challenge, I’ll play Ghosts’n'Goblins, Ikaruga, or DMC, as I don’t have to worry about trying to run away and change weapons, but accidentally changing my action bar instead.
You see, the devs there were competent enough to make a control scheme, that I don’t have to meddle with to enjoy myself.
Darkfall has potential. Any reviewer that scores based on potential is a bloody fool.
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@Adam
The impression is that he chose and liked #2, but found the game’s various malfeatures and bad design decisions so offputting that he couldn’t enjoy it much.
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@Adam
Alternately, “This steak was burnt to a crisp but served cold” does not mean the reviewer is biased against well-done steak or steak or beef or meat, even if there’s only one steakhouse in town.
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The Darkfall control scheme isn’t bad especially if you put some context into what’s going on.
When switching weapons you are shifting play styles. You shift from high dps/low defense two hander to low dps high defense sword and shield. You can then switch to a healing/nuking/buffing caster by switching to your mage staff.
In other games like say World of Warcraft they keep you from switching your playstyle by putting you “in combat” (additionally they restrict it with the concept of classes and even “builds” of classes, Darkfall doesn’t do that). In my experience that’s kind of a buggy arbitrary mechanic that’s pretty painful.
Darkfall has no such concept as “in combat”. You can eat, take a nap, put on armor, take off armor or whatever you want as long as you are willing to get bashed on the head while you are doing it.
I think the weapon switching and sheathing/unsheathing in Darkfall is an excellent way to slow players in their playstyle shifts. I think it appropriately causes you to need to shift your focus, takes some time to achieve that shift, takes some practice to achieve that shift.
You could trivialize the mode shift by just making it so casting a spell auto selects your staff, unsheathes it, takes off your armor to remove the cast penalty, and then casts the spell. Is that the kind of game you want to play?
According to normal UI design parameters of NOT GAMES that is what you should do.
DARKFALL IS A GAME. Therefore you are allowed and even should put some parameters around what they do and how they do it.
There are other ways to achieve the goal but they might have serious downsides. You could just lag people out while switching weapons. How about a 5 second wait instead of an active process of switching to the sword switching the shield in unsheathing the weapon. Do you want to play a game that just lags you out or one that allows you to DO something while you make that switch.
Something else that might escape a casual play and thought about this game is that the current scheme adds some barrier to macroing the switch.
When you don’t care about things like that you get things like the WoW mod “facesmasher”, which analyzes the state of your character, your target, buff/debuffs and then tells you exactly the next key to hit for maximum dps. I believe some mods take it a step further and just make the ’1′ key spammable to do it for you.
I like the system Darkfall has. I feel bad when I FAIL at doing my job in the game. I don’t BLAME MY TOOLS.
I would like to think that a professional game reviewer would give some thought to things like this when looking at a game. I don’t think Kieron did a great job on this review. There are other issues he brought up that I could agree or disagree with but life is short so I picked this one.
Probably most anyone won’t find anything interesting in any of your responses if it doesn’t get a little better than the steak metaphor, stating the game is malfeatured or worries about whether I’m “hardcore” or not. Some substance please?
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… and you get naked people running round fighting.
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“… and you get naked people running round fighting.”
Because they are bad and frightened of losing their trash gear.
But at least they are not too frightened to play the game in the first place.
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“You could trivialize the mode shift by just making it so casting a spell auto selects your staff, unsheathes it, takes off your armor to remove the cast penalty, and then casts the spell. Is that the kind of game you want to play?”
Or, you could make it where the weapons unsheath automatically, and leave it at that.
Every aspect of Darkfall seems to be based on making it as painful as possible to play
“When you don’t care about things like that you get things like the WoW mod “facesmasher”, which analyzes the state of your character, your target, buff/debuffs and then tells you exactly the next key to hit for maximum dps. I believe some mods take it a step further and just make the ‘1′ key spammable to do it for you.”
Such mods are looked down upon, and bannable.
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Nothing wrong with being a scrub, means you get to flirt with Elliott… ;-)
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Also, I’m not calling you hardcore. That’s the last thing I’d want to call you. I’m saying you have a delusion of being hardcore.
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@psychopomp
To loot, get on a horse, use the bank, revive a player etc you need to sheathe your weapon, target what you want and then “use” etc. If it’s looting you might have to move 20-30 items one by one from your opponents bag to yours.
So as you finish or decide to stop whatever you were doing because someone is nuking you down you think you should be able to just switch back to spamming your attack with no down time in switching back to combat?
The sheathe and unsheathe are very important in having a sequence that you need to do. Removing it would change the risk/reward ratio in attempting some actions.
As an example- My mount is dead, my opponent is dead with a mount despawned in his bag. I’m getting chased by his buddies. Do I turn and fight? Do I jump in the water to swim? Do I attempt to loot the mount and then quickly flee the scene? What do you do? Quick! Decide…
This stuff can be difficult to do when you are under stress. People screw it up because they start to flap, fail and then they die. This is one of the things that separates newbs from intermediate players….
I World of Warcraft I would trivially autoloot (but only if it was a mob) and then cast my instantcast flying mount or instantly go invisible. I’ve kind of lost interest in that level of game.
It hard to point at any game that doesn’t have some issues with control, visibility and discoverability. I’m sure Darkfall could use some -polish- in this. I personally wouldn’t want them to simplify this much as it would have serious game impacts.
Kieron’s review is bad (I mostly like his work otherwise). Instead of the meta-review and all the gabbie writery stuff he would have put much better time in talking to someone SUCCESSFULLY playing the game to help smooth it out.
Would he have reviewed Eve without getting a bit of help? How do you think Eve would do under that light?
Does every game have to be dead stupid simple? Run around, autotarget, and spam 1234214? Every player type accomodated by every game? Full loot FFA massive guild war FPS style MMO as simple and intuitive as peggle?
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AS far as having personal moments in MMORPG between players I never met a player I didn’t like in WoW. Even though someone before said I was good at it just because I didn’t have to change the controls (Which is just insane since Wow’s controls are just fine compared to the games I noramlly play say Dwarf Fortress or something)
Once I was out looking for a special pet for my hunter and I spent 5 days trying to find it (not straight, just looked over my entire game play time for 5 days) Finally I was about to give up with another player came along and told me where the mob was , lead me to it, and helped me tame it! Then we have a good chat about how it was his favorite pet before he got a faction based one and all this jazz and the other.
Another time my friends and I got pwned by this Undead cleric about 10 times. We kept running back at hime and dieing over and over again even though we where about 30 or more levels under him just to stay in character. Finally he just sit there doing funny emotes and healing himself while we kept trying to kill him (since the two sides couldn’t talk to each other on that server) And we had a great time.
In EQ I remember sitting in Nektulos forest and telling newbies that if they went out and got me X amount of wolf pelts ect I would make them armor which raised my armor making abilities and gave them armor. I ended up with a ton of friends doing this and really felt like I was critical to the success of theses characters to the point that if one of them was in trouble I’d run off to save them or help them find their body. Also met several people on there that became great friends outside the game and did a ton of roleplaying ect.
UO , wow UO. I played that game for so long and had so many things happen I could never cover them all in this post. I fell in love (yah I know I’m a nerd, what’s new) with one lady I met there and spend hours and days playing with her and helping her with the things she found important and protecting her because she was mentally unstable :P I joined a guild, got really in good with them, experienced some crazy dungeon raids and PVP encounters that ended with us all dieing. Then just as I was really getting used to be in the guild the guild leader back stabbed me and took all my stuff (Which I had been storing in the guild hall because I couldn’t afford a home at the time) Because he thought I was hitting on his wife :P (I was)
Then there was a famous (To me ) time that a random PvP walked up to my house while my best friend and I where talking. A brief battle took place ending with me splitting him in half with an axe. Then he came back and killed us both with a crazy ass blade spirit that was thrown into my house some how and wouldn’t let me get away or cast any spells : P Then we sat on my front porch and talked for about two hours. The guy started putting an etheral llama statue on the porch and then moving it back into his bag. My friend asked him he was doing, then called me on the telephone .He told me to ban the guy the next time he put the llama down so he’d have no chance of getting it back. I did so, my friend stole his llama and to this day any time he shows his face in Fel this entire guild tries to kill him :P
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OH YAH , and one time my friends and I crafted a couple hundred boxs and put them on the roof of moonglow bank so that it was impossible to recall in to the bank spot that 90% of the people used :P
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The more I read about Dark Fall the more it sounds like 3d UO . I’m going to HAVE to try this.
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@Railick
Lol… I didn’t play much UO past the first few weeks but my friend that played it like a fiend for 2 years after release (then didn’t care to play much mmo until Darkfall) said after a few weeks playing “wow this UO 2″.
It’s a good time… see you in game.
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I must chime in and say that Im a new darkfall player and I love it! Its not a game where you fight in a group, its a game where you fight in an army! Being apart of a clan really means something, as you have to really risk your life and gear for the clan, and in return the clan puts a roof over your head and friends at your side.
Its a wonderful game, and like any game, is constantly being patched, upgraded, and updated. Infact, it just recently got an awesome new content addition.
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@Adam (This is Railick btw, it randomly changes my name against my will ) Well if someone who played UO for 2 years says it is UO 2 then I’m freaking in.
That comment about the naked raids really reminds me of UO too. I used to run around naked with an axe killing people. It wasn’t because I was afraid of losing my gear so much as I was to lazy to replace it after dieing 50 times. I had a newbie axe and newbie apron which always respawned with me so I was pretty much ready to go as soon as I was revived by a healer.
Now an interesting story. One day I was sitting around the moongate near Yew when a dirty Red chicken shows up. It starts walkin around I think “hey, I can kill this chicken” so I attack it , the chikcen disarmed me and killed me in one hit then he went on kill about 10 other people. Morale of the story is don’t mess with a dirty red chicken, it’s really a dirty red player polymorphed into a chicken ;P
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@Adam:
By obtuse you mean you never mastered how to switch your weapons.
By obtuse, I mean precisely that. Hard to understand (which isn’t a problem in itself) but not handled or presented in any clear or intuitive way (which is actually its problem).
Also, when you suggest others don’t understand the game because they aren’t “mastering” something that shouldn’t need to be mastered in the first place, that might be a problem on the apologist side rather than of those who actually tried it. If you’re suggesting the control system only rewards slavish devotion to its arcane workings, you shouldn’t be too surprised when it’s failing to convert more people.
There are two responses-
1- “OMFG DARKFALL IS SO OBTUSE”
2- “OMFG I NEED TO GET BETTER AT THAT”
I picked door number 2.
Kieron and yourself seem to have picked door number 1.
And that’s only because door number 2′s doorknob kept gnawing at my hand. Getting better at something is only worthwhile when there’s some incentive to it. I’ve mentioned IL-2 Sturmovik for a reason and if it wasn’t clear, it’s because the control is hard to understand but provides an affordable and elegant learning curve (unlike Darfall, which ditches the curve for a handful of zig-zags and chasms). I’ve been playing Dwarf Fortress lately, which is completely impenetrable to most people, and I can’t remember one single moment where I felt like giving up because of its control method.
Yet, I can think of several in Darkfall. Does that make me a quitter? Does that mark me as another one among the unwashed masses who will never fully experience the rapture of Darfall’s many joyous gifts? Quite likely yes, but I don’t regret it in the slightest. When you’re developing something “forever”, it pays to have in mind not everyone will wait forever for it to play well.
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to be fair Diogo Dwarf Fortress’s control scheme isn’t all that bad. It gives you everything you need to know you just have to read and soon or later you’ll remember where everything is. For example I can build a wall 50 tiles long very quickly by just tapping the same combo of keys over and over again. Of coures sometimes I random put something I don’t want in the middle of my wall because I typoed ;P also I hate it when I accidently use a piece of wood for a wall instead of stone, I just feel like wooden walls should be weaker.
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“Does every game have to be dead stupid simple?”
No
But simple games shouldn’t make everything as difficult as possible, in order to create the illusion of complexity.
“I World of Warcraft I would trivially autoloot (but only if it was a mob) and then cast my instantcast flying mount or instantly go invisible.”
There are no instant cast mounts, *and* you can’t mount up in combat. Period.
Three seconds is a long time to be standing still, anyway. Ask an caster who PvP’s.
Your move.
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@Diego
So using your Sturmovik comparison there would be no reason to have flaps, carburetor and trim controls? That would be bad game design? Or you like the fact that there are things to learn and get used to in your game? Things that if you don’t use at the right moment you will fail (and get drylooted)?
Why is the fact that you have to sheath and unsheath your weapon before digging through your bags is too “obtuse”? That’s not just more real than instant cast button spamming? In a “real” world would you dig through your pack with a 2 handed broadsword? Would you sheath the weapon and be somewhat vulnerable?
The reality is that your criticism of the Darkfall controls is “obtuse” ie just you being difficult. You haven’t really replied substantively to my post. Instead you’ve used multiple metaphors to say Darkfall is hard but yet not had the stones to say “it should be like game x”.
In Sturmovik you were motivated because you percieved there was an interesting game that was worth mastering. It’s ok not to feel that Darkfall is that game.
I would point out that there is literally no other game like it on the market. PVP situations are ALWAYS more complicated than any PVE raid. PVP situations are further complicated by risk (the looting), open world(you never know whats around the corner), guilds (who are your friends vs their friends), capturable resources (changing balance of power), no autotargeting exposes peoples reflexes etc.
I think not getting Darkfall because of the controls is indicative of someone that does not care to play such a game. If you wanted to play this game you would find the minor motivation to deal with your control issues (it does need polish just not reworking imo).
I simply don’t hear Darkfall players crying about the controls. Most of them seem to feel its painful when you screwup but interesting too.
This kind of indicates that its not the controls but the intrinsic values of the gamer.
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@Psychopomp
“”"“Does every game have to be dead stupid simple?”
No
But simple games shouldn’t make everything as difficult as possible, in order to create the illusion of complexity. “”"
Your dead simple posts shouldn’t hint at vast levels of complexity.
“”"“I World of Warcraft I would trivially autoloot (but only if it was a mob) and then cast my instantcast flying mount or instantly go invisible.”
There are no instant cast mounts, *and* you can’t mount up in combat. Period.
Three seconds is a long time to be standing still, anyway. Ask an caster who PvP’s.
Your move.”"”
Gank character with feral druid.. out of combat… instant cast flight form… spam /lol at pursuers and you.
Maybe you should play that game some more…
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It should be like Mount & Blade.
Really, there’s a reason nobody makes a game to game comparison with a sentence like that unless they’re trying to stir up an argument.
And, controls or whatever, bad is bad. Doesn’t matter whether one player can get used to them and one player can’t. Doesn’t matter whether one person’s seen something similar before and another hasn’t. It’s hard to convince someone else to play something that, on the face of it, is flawed in many ways, no matter what amazing secrets might lie deep beneath the surface. If it’s easy to play then, of course, even if the game’s bad a player is more likely to slip into it, a la WoW. Ideally you’d want a combination of the two – a good game that’s easy to get into, so you get trapped in it. Not that I’ve seen an MMO do that well yet.
An example for you: I simultaneously love and hate Eve, and yet haven’t really ever managed to directly convince someone else to play it yet – if they can dig through and get to best parts of the game, and they like that kind of thing in a game then they’ll probably play it. But it has bad stuff. So all I do is inform them of the game, what I know about it, and what they should expect, along with what I thought of it. I leave it up to them to decide whether they want to try it or not, and whether they do or not is up to them. Even if they’ll never get to the far end game they could stay in it – even Eve seems to rely on its casual players to some degree, and tries to make it easier for new people (they’ve even worked on the new player experience a bit to help out). If they seriously need more convincing before they’ll go as far as trying the demo, or need convincing after the demo, I’ll just ward them away – it’s probably not for them. Because, good as Eve can be in many ways, it’s also rubbish in many others.
Even Jim said himself: “I can’t honestly recommend Eve Online. I play it, and it’s remains one of the most fulfilling, frustrating, exciting and excruciating gaming experiences I’ve had. Eve is a game that has expanded the list of interesting stuff in the world, and it has created an utterly unique and beautiful game in the process. But I can’t recommend it. I can recommend Peggle to anyone, but Eve, well, I’d say that you should consider yourself warned.”
And that’s basically what Kieron did. He can’t really recommend it to anyone as easily as Peggle, or Portal, or Tetris. It’s not a game for everyone. He didn’t try to treat it as such, far as I can tell.
Telling everyone they should like a game, and hinting at everyone that’s uncomfortable with the idea that they’re sub-par examples of human beings (“Intrinsic values of the gamer?”), won’t make it so. And make just put them off :)
[It's not like this isn't common, of course: loving a game so much you feel it's right to defend it, and defend the game so much, so passionately, that you end up putting people off instead. It happens everywhere, in everything. Maybe someone will work out how to prevent it and make everybody happy again, maybe with giant global hugs. But I doubt it'll happen. We're only human. It'll probably require everyone in the world doing the impossible and agreeing on something! Like that'll happen.]
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“I simply don’t hear Darkfall players crying about the controls.”
The ones who don’t like it aren’t going to stick around.
“Your dead simple posts shouldn’t hint at vast levels of complexity.”
Way to dodge the point there, champ.
Also, I have not tried to hint at, nor do I have delusions of, complexity.
“Gank character with feral druid.. out of combat… instant cast flight form… spam /lol at pursuers and you.”
Touche. I’ve never leveled a Druid.
Even Jim said himself: “I can’t honestly recommend Eve Online. I play it, and it’s remains one of the most fulfilling, frustrating, exciting and excruciating gaming experiences I’ve had. Eve is a game that has expanded the list of interesting stuff in the world, and it has created an utterly unique and beautiful game in the process. But I can’t recommend it. I can recommend Peggle to anyone, but Eve, well, I’d say that you should consider yourself warned.”
Unfortunately, most people aren’t as level headed as Jim.
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@Adam:
You haven’t really replied substantively to my post.
I’m not sure in how many more ways I can explain the word “unintuitive”.
Instead you’ve used multiple metaphors to say Darkfall is hard
Also not sure how pointing out its control scheme is clunky is a metaphor. Now, if I were to say Darkfall’s controls were a challenge for people who don’t think nailing pudding to the wall is hard enough, that might be one.
but yet not had the stones to say “it should be like game x”.
Why would the size or mere presence of my genitals have anything to do with it? Not that I mind people discussing my stones – they are, after all, works of art, petite but sturdy marathon champs. But why should I even feel the need to address Darkfall’s controls by claiming it should be like X or Y game? Not only would that go against fans’ prefered method of defense (ie., “Darkfall is its own thing and should not be compared to other titles like World of Warcraft”) it’s also not very reliable, is it? I mean, I could say I’d want it to be like Dwarf Fortress or Wii Sports (or that weird-ass japanese arcade I once saw that simulated sexual penetration but have since then forgotten its name) in terms of control and neither would help – even assuming they could be an honest opinion. It’s pointless and disruptive, since it does not address the fundamental issue and bears little reference to the original object of discussion. I could say I’d like it to learn some lessons of functionality from Neverwinter Nights… And can you honestly tell me no Darkfall fan is gonna wail at that suggestion? Citing different games, different themes, different experiences and so on? In fact, I thoroughly despised NWN (its official campaign, at least) and can say the controls were rather optimal for what they were trying to do. In Darkfall I feel the opposite – I enjoy the premise and concept of the game, but the controls put me off. Andy’s suggestion of it being like Mount and Blade, at least, seems spot on.
I simply don’t hear Darkfall players crying about the controls.
Yet even you, a fervent defender of the game, admit they need a bit more polish.
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I like you Diogo. You two should get your own blog where you just argue back and forth about Darkfall and see where it goes ;) I know I’d check back and read it every single day.
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@Diogo
“”"I’m not sure in how many more ways I can explain the word “unintuitive”.”"”
Thats my point about your writing and your metaphors, why are you repeating yourself? Your posts consist of a Darkfall’s controls as a doorknob that bites your hand(not just a metaphor but a mixed one) and “zigzags and chasms” (another metaphor).
These are both metaphors and also fairly content free versions of “Diogo doesn’t like Darkfall controls, they are bad umkay?”.
I proposed a few reasons why you might want multiple steps in some of the actions in an earlier post and then I show some similarities to the Sturmovik game that you held up as a model for how Darkfall should be….and yet you respond with? Well lets look at your next post?
typingtyping”I don’t want to propose anything”typingtyping”Maybe it could be more like Mount and Blade like the other guys says”
Ok well I was going to respond to Andy anyway.
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@Andy re Mount and Blade controls
How is it really different than Mount and Blade? I do not recall but I thought M&B had a sheath/unsheath of the “equipped” weapons? Darkfall also has a staff, bow, 2h, 1h and shield always available to play with? Actually anything in your bag really. Darkfall also has potentially 50ish spells to manage as well.
Darkfall also has “equipped” weapons but you can equip anything in your bag. It must then be unsheated for the reasons I’ve exhaustively listed above.
Mount and Blade has an “in combat” mechanism (which doesn’t work well for an open world pvp environment in general) to restrict your weapon choices to before combat. You can then pick 1 of 2 “in combat”(am I remembering this correctly?).
As I said earlier “in combat” is very prone to basic glitchiness, is annoying in what it restricts, arbirtrary in when you are/are not in combat. In an open world game those flaws become more pronounced, for example in large group combat someone in your party is in combat so are you automatically? I really really like the fact that Darkfall does not have “in combat”, “in combat” is like the fps barrel/crate of mmo’s (that’s a simile for those watching).
If someone knows Mount and Blade and/or Darkfall well enough to respond in more detail I think it turn this conversation on a more interesting tack.
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As far as I know in Mount and Blade you have a limit to how many weaposn you can bring directly on your character but you also have access to a chest where you can change your weapons in the midst of combat. (This may have changed however, I know a lot changed since I lost my Key and was unable to patch the game) IT allowed you to switch between weapons on the fly just by hitting a button and there is no sheath/unsheathed (since the only time you use your weapon is in combat so whats the point of sheathing it right?) The only time you get to sheath your weapon is when you’re sheathing it in another person’s stomach ;) I love that game so much.
would it be fair to say Dark Fall is like a combo of UO and Mount and Blade, if this is the case I shalt leave my wife and kids and dedicate the rest of my life to playing it.
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Adam: I don’t know, I barely played M&B (played the demo ages ago so don’t remember much, only just bought the full game which I haven’t touched yet), and I haven’t played Darkfall, I just picked M&B as the example “it should be like” game of choice since I figured it was probably close anyway, but I’m guessing more refined, if my vague memories of the M&B demo and the descriptions of controls here are anything to go by.
But seriously, I just needed something for my “argument fuel” point, which you and Diogo may have (can’t be certain due to other factors involved) unwittingly proven for me.
Now I feel cruel :(
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I’m a Darkfall player and I didn’t have a problem with the review. The best parts of the game were missing, but complaining about that would be like complaining about a WoW review not covering top-end raid content and arena matches. Darkfall’s endgame is the city holding, alliance building, political manuevering, money-making, resource gathering and massive warfare most of us have become addicted to.
Honestly, the controls are a bit awkward until changes are made to keybindings and chat options – that’s just how it is. It certainly didn’t bother me, but I’m one of the players that rebinds my keys in every MMO I play before I even get 10 steps from the initial spawn. Still, saying rebinding for the sake of fluidity is like the developer forcing you to ‘reprogram their game’ is a bit much. That’s like saying that changing your interface options in WoW to include additional hotbars is WoW making you redesign it’s UI in order to access the full range of your abilities fluidly. Really, it’s not that bad.
All this stuff about the game being painful is, well, subjective. I wouldn’t play a game if I didn’t enjoy it. The ‘challenging’ part isn’t about item loss or overcoming a cumbersome control scheme. The challenge is in being given the opportunity to do anything at any time. Sounds easy, right? Except you don’t have dozens of convenient quests telling you what to kill and where to go next. After the initial run of goblin quests, you’re basically told “you’re on your own now, go get ‘em!”. I loved it.
I didn’t realize how much I loved it until NA1, though. When I first started on EU1, I had serious difficulty killing more than 1 goblin at a time. When I started on NA1 with the same zero-skill character, I wiped the floor with entire goblin camps without even pausing to rest. How many games can you honestly say allow for player ability to make that much of a difference from the first moment you spawn into the game?
I’m hooked for as long as the game lasts, barring some catastrophic change in philosophy on the part of AV. I just can’t go back to an overly helpful and restrictive level-based character advancement system like 99 games out of 100 use now…I’m too used to the freedom of doing anything at any time despite my character’s level – the time I spend just allows me to do it better.
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“Your posts consist of a Darkfall’s controls as a doorknob that bites your hand(not just a metaphor but a mixed one) “
Not really. That particular answer was to your own metaphor for people who gave up on Darkfall’s controls (choosing doors). It kinda helps to keep the context of my replies in mind if you want to take issue against them, and to remember what you wrote yourself before waving the anti-metaphor banner.
“the Sturmovik game that you held up as a model for how Darkfall should be”
I used Sturmovik as an example of a game that, like Darkfall, aims to provide “a challenging environment for a seasoned player to master”. Not as an example of what Darkfall should be, but what of Darkfall doesn’t manage to do very well.
typingtyping”I don’t want to propose anything”typingtyping”Maybe it could be more like Mount and Blade like the other guys says”
I said his suggestion was spot on but it wasn’t me who did the suggestion, was it? Besides, you’re only looking to fuel the argument not otherwise. Earlier you accused me of not having the stones (something the missus would gladly dispute) of saying Darkfall should be like game X or Y. Then, when I apparently do it, you completely gloss over it and ramble on about me having done it.
So, which is it?
If you don’t like my balls just say it, man. But don’t play marble with them.
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1. The Review is one of my favourite reviews ever
2. Did you see the bit above this comment where people started laying into each others metaphors? Brilliant. BRILLIANT.
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You started your review with “Of course, I haven’t played it enough.”
You should have stopped there.
When a mainstream journalist like yourself reviews an ultraniche game like DFO … well you know what I’m going to say.
Not to mention the fact that because of the previous “review” by Mr. Ed your hands were tied. You’re a “professional”, and that means you never had the option to give DFO a better score. Your first priorities are with your colleague and Eurogamer (you know the people that pay you money). Giving DFO a higher score would have made them look like amateurs.
Disclaimer: No I don’t play DFO. I playedtested the beta for a while, and I didn’t like it at all.
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Having completely missed this the first time around, I would like to thank you for all the reviews over the years, and hope that you still find time to share your thoughts with all of us. Thanks Kieron!
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Great resource. I really enjoyed your site!
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Great post thanks for the read!
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GOod post thanks!!
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