Profile: Arqentus
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• • Darkfall: New Darkfall Trailer

  • Here are my impressions for somebody who has been looking at DF from a year or 7 ago. I want a freaking game that can take Ultima Online's shoes. That expands on the gameplay. That brings the graphics to the year 200x ( fill in the current year, because i've only been waiting for what, 10 years? ). So, don't start to categories me as one of those people that are out to break a game.

    Graphics: I need to agree with some of the comments. No offense to anybody, but the graphics based on the video look almost exactly the same like it did when they released there first screenshots all those years ago.

    I for one, can not see how the video graphics, and the gallery on the official website are so different.

    You know where i have seen the same pattern? Several other mmorpg's, where they showed screenshots of the game, that (a) are touched up, (b) are running high end textures, shaders etc, that turn the game to a 1fps slideshow, (c) are taking from a distance, (d) enhanced with lots of bloom ... Take it from me, screenshots are not going to give the correct idea of the game. Video, now, thats a lot harder to manipulate. So in general, i rather base my experiences on those.

    Animation: Major problem here. You can clearly tell that the animation is very limited, almost block like. In other words, there has been no motion captor used. Maybe its me, but you where able to tell that the ground, and the feet where misaligned. Resulting in a detached shadow.

    Same with the boarding / leaving of ships, the swimming, etc. Very limited looking animations.

    Ships:

    Well, no offense, but what the hell was that? Most of you may not have noticed, but the insides of the ships are just empty rooms. You can notice this the best on the big battleship, what also make a impossible turn! You can't turn a ship on a dime.

    I also had a problem with the cannons on several fronts. The way the cannons are handled, they looked more like somebody's idea of a minigun on a Huey, then cannons. Suspended, fixed position ( handing from above the hull ) canons, with no recoil? Same with the hit explosions on the ships. There looked to be no damage indicator. You had ship, and you had ship sinking aka, reduce level by x every sec. Thats it...

    The same can be said about the city siege, and the walls.

    Beta Testers:

    Now, let me put a few ideas out of the way that some people have. A payed beta tester is only helpful in specific instances. Take it from me, testing a product will result in people repeating the same pattern. If you have 10 payed testers, you will have 10 * the same pattern. In other words, when i come in the game, i might click a, c, b, where as there beta testers always click a, b, c... It may look silly, but as a software developer you notice a lot how something that looks to work perfectly, ends up crashing, or creating other problems, because you did not anticipate a end user doing x actions. And the more complexer the software, and in this case, the gameplay, the more easy it is for problems to sneak in. So, yea, if they are planning on running a short 2 months beta, for a 2008 release. Good luck on you early buyers, *kuch* i mean, beta testers.

    General:

    To me, it looked like was lacking a lot of details, to put it bluntly, it looked like those city siege, navel battle looked like a afterthought that where quickly added to the game.

    Also, to the people who say: "But, its not feature complete", "Its going to be added or fixed in the beta", "They will increase the graphics, animation in the beta". Take it from somebody who has been in 6 beta's ( including several possible UO successors ). What you see, it what you get most of the time.

    I hope that this video is very misleading, and that the final game will be superior, and a worthy successor to UO. But, i'm sorry to say, that video did not show anything to make me conclude it will. On the contrary, i had more the feeling that somebody put x number of concepts, and threw them together without having a complete idea what they want.

    For something that has been in development longer then i can remember, to me it looked more like a game that 2 schoolkids put together in there spare time, then any professional work. And no amount of pink glasses is going to change that.

    So, to conclude, my impression after 2 years not looking at any updates: Not very promising. I'm sorry that some will hate my for writing this, but i can't hide my disappointment. One may say that it caters to a niche market, like Eve. But, i'm sorry to say, Eve was not not 7 or 8 years in development? Yea, i lost track, it has been so long that DF has been in development!

    So, i hope that it will turn out ok, and i can finally, after all there years, play a worthy successor to UO.

    Ps: there are a few seconds off what looks like part of a interface mechanism in the video ( look at the banking, and smithing scene ).

  • Posted: 9/06/08 9:01 PM
    General Discussion