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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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2. Did you see the bit above this comment where people started laying into each others metaphors? Brilliant. BRILLIANT.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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