IGN Peek #16 - Nov 29, 2005

[Scottc1988]

New article is up to go with the screens.
http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671809p1.html

http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_id=3238322&object_id=16821&channel_id=227&page_title=Darkfall+Update+Interview&adString=network%3Dign%26site%3Drpgvault %26pagetype%3Dmediaimgthin&return_url=http%3A%2F%2Frpgvault.ign.com %2Fobjects%2F016%2F016821.html

http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_id=3238323&object_id=16821&channel_id=227&page_title=Darkfall+Update+Interview&adString=network%3Dign%26site%3Drpgvault %26pagetype%3Dmediaimgthin%26pagetype%3D mediaimgthin&return_url=http%3A%2F%2Frpgvault.ign.com %2Fobjects%2F016%2F016821.html

http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_id=3238324&object_id=16821&channel_id=227&page_title=Darkfall+Update+Interview&adString=network%3Dign%26site%3Drpgvault %26pagetype%3Dmediaimgthin%26pagetype%3D mediaimgthin&return_url=http%3A%2F%2Frpgvault.ign.com %2Fobjects%2F016%2F016821.html

[Relentless]

:eek:

[Gowel]

Well those are renders actually. ;)

[Taurohta]

Holy fuck, the way the woman grabed that orks axe, and the ork grabs her by the neck, that cant be actual combat... can it?

edit:
Well those are renders actually. yea gdgd figured

[Seether]

Aww! That's cute...the ork and human are dancing!

[Satorian]

Mmmmmmmhhhh.... Ork-cuddling....

[Rhynn]

That's gonna be one ugly baby.

[Akela]

Well...she started it..."Hey, you big..green..ork-male thing..Now just wait there! Let me get on my tippy toes and poke you in your ugly face with my fist.......There! Whatcha gonna do about it, huh, huh ... Huh!?"

[Scottc1988]

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671809p1.html
article is up

[Ascanet]

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671809p1.html
article is up

yup there's been 3 or 4 threads about it already =)

edit: nevermind new article :o

[Rhynn]

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671809p1.html

Second day of info is up. Nothing new, nice to know there's a "free city" for evil-doers though.

[Preston]

yeah, Darkfall's game design is really sweet.

[Darkmatter]

Great stuff, I`m loving it. (mirdain female?)

[Mistereo]

Ah now I got a day to wait till another one comes out, this one was great lots of good info but short but sweet. Only thing what self respecting Alfar will get Paragon of Good for alignment ;)

[Phooey]

A little short, but definately a good read! I especially like the part about living lawless at the end.

[Shaar]

When they say "Good" they mean good in the eyes of your race. Good Alfar means evil alfar. Get it?

[Shaar]

Short but good to have. Clarifies a few things. Lets hope tomorrow we will get one about siege...

[Sarusan]

I would love to see that info on general DarkFall website not at ign :( Waiting for some more "official" info,

[Marrock]

Alignment and Player-Killing in Darkfall

Darkfall is a game with full PvP and unlimited looting. Does this mean you can kill anyone you meet and take their stuff? Yes it does, but it does not mean that such actions have no consequences.

When designing Darkfall, we sought to avoid "because we say so" rules that make no in-game sense but dictate player behavior. Limitations on player freedom may be necessary in cuddlier, more mainstream-focused games, but Darkfall will never stop you from killing someone just because he or she has turned PK off in some menu.
In Darkfall, it is difficult but possible to live outside the law, especially if you avoid places that are densely populated by players who receive alignment boosts for killing you.
Very nice indeed :), This has to be the best thing I've read in sometime.

[Gowel]

threads merged

[Khumash-Gor]

nice nice! its always good to see updates

[purgatorious]

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671809p1.html

Second day of info is up. Nothing new, nice to know there's a "free city" for evil-doers though.

Id like to see Darkfall have its own version of Buc's Den for thieves and murderers and such to run wild in.

[Satorian]

I love the DF design decisions. It's all so promising and it's looking more and more like they are going to deliver. :)

[Marrock]

Id like to see Darkfall have its own version of Buc's Den for thieves and murderers and such to run wild in.
Very true, I can only hope we'll have someplace like Buc's Den.

[Phooey]

Very true, I can only hope we'll have someplace like Buc's Den.
Well, this latest article sounds like we WILL have a place similar to Bucc's Den. Read the last section. :D

All Chaos Stone are maintained by the members of a twisted race called the empyreals, whose fate appears tied to that of the Stones they guard. The empyreals run establishments such as banks and shops catering to individuals who are bound to their Chaos Stone.

Recently, the empyreals have begun constructing magical portals to Silvertown, a free city state off the coast of Mercia. It's a lawless place where profit is king, and a long-established magnet for alternatively aligned people.

[Unknewn]

OHHHHH MYYYYY DARKFALL TEAM (yes not omg)!!!!!!

[Scottc1988]

Portals though ? :\

[Dorundain]

It should be mentioned that sinking to a negative alignment among your own race doesn't improve your standing with its traditional enemies. ... It is impossible for an orkish player to improve his or her standing among the mirdain, and vice versa.
I didn't know this before... I had assumed that it would work on a basic "faction" system; apparently not! :)

The only way to increase your alignment score is to kill players who belong to races with an opposed alignment, or individuals of your own race (or an allied race) who have a negative alignments.
That's neat. We won't all be Glorious Lord/Lady after two weeks.

[Marrock]

Well, this latest article sounds like we WILL have a place similar to Bucc's Den. Read the last section. :D

SWEET, thanks for pointing that out to me Phooey. Looks like all killers and mass murderers will have a place to hang out after all.

[Shaar]

I would like it though if there were ways to increase your standing with opossing races. Then you could have the odd Alfar hanging around humans etc. More divercity.

[BLACKWATCH]

Bless ya, Developers, that little widget of information and posting, rekindled
my jaded dreams...

Its a great sight to see that you have made some sort of milestone and are
starting to get active on the "Sites"..

More importaint is that you have told us Darkfall has remained true to the
Dreams of the developers... *And hell yes it looks ok....!*..

Were now all sitting here grinding teeth, in anticipation...Whoo Ya!!

It has been way to long, but at least it seams that were soooo close to a real
game, finaly, progress... Ya baby!!

Ramp it up, keep it comming, give us what we need!! :P

[Gunther TheBlack]

Id like to see Darkfall have its own version of Buc's Den for thieves and murderers and such to run wild in.

I already know for 2 years or so that there will be a "buc's den" like town. Silver Town is a lawless town just like they said in the article, and the devs already mentioned silver town about 2 years ago or so.

[Khabbi]

I would like it though if there were ways to increase your standing with opossing races. Then you could have the odd Alfar hanging around humans etc. More divercity.

Didn't your momma tell you that all Alfars are bad and they should all be killed on sight?

[Gotrex]

awesome

very glad to see there is an equivilent of bucs den in silvertown

one thing i do wonder is if cross faction trading will be posible? will some enterprising unscrupulous dwarf smith be able to make a fortune selling the superior dwarven technology to orks and alfar?

[Falstaff]

This has been the best week ever so far, who needs christmas.

[kehmesis]

I want beta at xmas :)

Shaar, if we could become good to ennemy races, there would be hardly any outlaws. You'd just switch sides. ARAC guilds would definitively celebrate this greatly.

I think it's great that you can't.

[Yuengling.OoB]

I would like it though if there were ways to increase your standing with opossing races. Then you could have the odd Alfar hanging around humans etc. More divercity.

The current system limits all race clans. Which is doubleplusgood.

Silvertown = Deadwood

'cept Alfar will own/run everything and all other races will pay inflated prices and like it.

[Malhavok]

That pretty much panned out how I was expecting.

The only thing I found disappointing, but not unexpected, was evil aligned clans being treated the same as ARAC clans. Major dissapointment for me there. I was hopeing for a more player controlled approach to limiting undesiriable behavior. Instead, it looks like we'll have an L2-esque (but fortunately significantly toned down) version of "open PvP". I'll with hold my vigil of protests until we know how declarations of war are to function. So long as you can have an effectively unlimited number of declarations (not invitations ala UO) and they don't cost a significant ammount to maintain you could still end up with a mostly open PvP environment with the only restriction being that you could not indiscriminately kill unclanned players. 'Course we all know what the gold farmers will be playing.

From a more global point of view it bugs me because it encourages ARAC while eliminating any reason what-so-ever to play as same allignment bandits or pirates. Now if you want to be PKs there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to be ARAC. It provides only advantages.

[Maegras Caranuial]

The part about Silvertown almost makes me want to play as a human outlaw :eek:

[Satorian]

@Malhavok: ARAC clans still have the problem of defense and logistics with NPCs that might ignore your alignment due to the payment, but won't ignore your race.

[Patroclus]

Almost everything between the first and last paragraphs in that article sounds care bear. We should be able to kill and steal from any player or NPC we want without any restrictions. By this I mean that punishment should only be obtainable through revenge by the victims and not some lame programmed feature like the inability to enter a town without the refusal of trade or being attacked by NPCs.

Save that alignment garbage for care bear games like Lineage 2 imo.

[Erratic]

Almost everything between the first and last paragraphs in that article sounds care bear. We should be able to kill and steal from any player or NPC we want without any restrictions. By this I mean that punishment should only be obtainable through revenge by the victims and not some lame programmed feature like the inability to enter a town without the refusal of trade or being attacked by NPCs.

Save that alignment garbage for care bear games like Lineage 2 imo.
You can do whatever you want, but they are consequences... If you want to be able to kill ever other race without taking a hit, than play an Alfar and be outnumbered by all the other races.

[Malhavok]

@Malhavok: ARAC clans still have the problem of defense and logistics with NPCs that might ignore your alignment due to the payment, but won't ignore your race.

There has been no reference to "special" NPCs which you can pay more so they will not KoS evil aligned players. As it stands ARAC clans are encouraged more than evil clans. They have the exact same arbitrary hardcoded penalties, but the ARAC atleast has the advantage of being more well rounded.

[Malhavok]

You can do whatever you want, but they are consequences... If you want to be able to kill ever other race without taking a hit, than play an Alfar and be outnumbered by all the other races.

Yes, exactly. There are hardcoded penalties. You want penalties? Fine, let it be at the hands of the players. What we have now is a toned down version of L2 karma system. Yes, it is "open PvP" but the game is hardcoded to prevent it. You want an alignment system? Fine, but leave player justice up to the players and not some crutch game code. This game was supposed to be about giving the players the tools to regulate themselves. Instead we have arbitrary game code regulating players.

You can kill other races in WoW and DAoC. It didn't make them open PvP games. If you like RvR, fine that aspect of the game is there. For those of us who want open PvP and want player justice to exist this was a huge blow.

[Erratic]

Yes, exactly. There are hardcoded penalties. You want penalties? Fine, let it be at the hands of the players. What we have now is a toned down version of L2 karma system. Yes, it is "open PvP" but the game is hardcoded to prevent it. You want an alignment system? Fine, but leave player justice up to the players and not some crutch game code. This game was supposed to be about giving the players the tools to regulate themselves. Instead we have arbitrary game code regulating players.

You can kill other races in WoW and DAoC. It didn't make them open PvP games. If you like RvR, fine that aspect of the game is there. For those of us who want open PvP and want player justice to exist this was a huge blow.
It isn't hard coded to prevent it... It just establishes a system in which players actually have to think before they act... If you wanted some quake, guns blazing, I left my brain at home, type of game, then yeah this wouldn't be it...

PvP all day long if you want... If you are a human go kill Alfar, Orcs and Mahirim, and be loved for it. If you want to kill the people who are supposed to protect you then prepare to be shunned for it. But in either case there is nothing preventing you from doing either has much or as little as you want to...

[Khabbi]

I agree, there has to be some way to discourage PKing of your own race. I think the devs have handled the issue very well so far. I can't wait to actually see it in action.

[Satorian]

There has been no reference to "special" NPCs which you can pay more so they will not KoS evil aligned players. As it stands ARAC clans are encouraged more than evil clans. They have the exact same arbitrary hardcoded penalties, but the ARAC atleast has the advantage of being more well rounded.

I remember reading that hired NPCs don't care about your alignment, just about your race and the employer's KoS list. Written proof for that eludes me at the moment though.

[Malhavok]

It isn't hard coded to prevent it... It just establishes a system in which players actually have to think before they act... If you wanted some quake, guns blazing, I left my brain at home, type of game, then yeah this wouldn't be it...

PvP all day long if you want... If you are a human go kill Alfar, Orcs and Mahirim, and be loved for it. If you want to kill the people who are supposed to protect you then prepare to be shunned for it. But in either case there is nothing preventing you from doing either has much or as little as you want to...

If I wanted to play in a closed PvP environtment and RvR all day I'd play WoW or DAoC. I don't want to play a consensual game. I want open PvP. Shadowbane proved that players are perfectly capable of regulating themselves and we do not need arbitrary hardcodeing (PvP switches, Trammel, etc) so long as the tools for extracting player justice are present. Don't like getting PKed day and night by some evil aligned clan two kingdoms over? Band together and do something about it. If you are too weak to do it, oh well. Too bad.

There is nothing preventing you killing your own racial alliance in DF just as there is nothing preventing you killing people in L2 and UO post stat-loss. The intention in all three cases is the same. Consentual only PvP masquerading as open PvP behind hardcoded artificial restrictions. Thats not my cup of tea. Darkfall isn't a mix of UO, Shadowbane, and CS. It's a mix of SB, L2/UO Post-statloss, and CS. SB style city conquering. L2 style karma/alignment. And Combat/tachtics emphasis from CS.

All this being said, House Shivering is NOT a RPK clan and has no intention of being an RPK clan. I in no way want a senseless deathmatch. Saying that removal of the alignment system would lead to such is equivelant to saying that was the case with SB. Anyone who played SB can attest that your actions DID have repurcusions. The difference between SB and DF is that those repurcusions were solely at the hands of the players in SB where in DF it will be a mix between arbitrary hardcoded repurcusions and player justice. Arbitrary hardcoded repurcusions are the definition of carebear.

The ability to freely declare war on your own race has the potential of eliminating the vast vast majority of the effects of the hardcoded repurcusions (read: carebear) it will never complete remove it. And so long as you can declare war on an effectively unlimited number of clans without any coded penalties (high cost to maintain wars, NPCs magically KoSing you for declaring war on members of your own race, etc) then the move to completely remove evil clans from the political scene (so much so as to penalize evil clans even heavier than ARAC clans) may actually have an over all positive impact on the game. If on the otherhand wars are expensive to maintain... hopefully the gameplay is good, because it certainly won't be the so called "open PvP" environment which will be holding my interest.

[Malhavok]

I remember reading that hired NPCs don't care about your alignment, just about your race and the employer's KoS list. Written proof for that eludes me at the moment though.

It was somewhat of a greyzone up until this last IGN peek. This stemmed lots of speculation that you could hire slightly weaker or more costly NPCs that would ignore alignment.


There won't be any terrible, character-destroying repercussions if you just kill this one guy who's been annoying you all night, but if you make a habit of killing your own kind, your alignment eventually sinks to the level where NPCs won't give you quests or trade with you. If you spiral still further into depravity, NPC guards will start attacking you, while good players begin to receive alignment boosts for (temporarily) ending your reign of terror.

That more or less ends all the speculation. Pretty cut and dry. Evil alligned player clans are at an even higher hardcoded disadvantages than ARAC. Of course they could have just neglected to mention that you could hire "evil friendly" NPCs, but I find that pretty unlikely.

[Erratic]

Is anything preventing you from PvPing anywhere and to anyone you want?

The answer is NO... That is open pvp... If you are scared of consequences for constantly behaving foolishly than that is too bad. I can't put it any other way. You can do whatever you want...

BTW: I don't know why you keep point to SB as if it were sliced bread. It failed terribly and has since joined the ranks of numerous mmo's which tease the PvP crowd but never satisfies them...

[Patroclus]

I agree, there has to be some way to discourage PKing of your own race. I think the devs have handled the issue very well so far. I can't wait to actually see it in action.
Why? So you can farm your precious gold and levels in peace?

Restrictions against the murder of your own race are like a semi-improved version of the care bear world of warcraft system. No matter how much noobs (pretty much everyone on the server imo) piss you off, you are prevented from getting rid of them in one shape or form. In Darkfall, according to the article, player racial pking is prevented by the penalties of a Lineage 2 style Karma system.

A better approach would be the removal of these alignment penalties and the promotion of player justice. If you get owned, form a zerg and get the pker back. There should be no hostile NPCs, no denial of trade, and no limits to the cities you may enter.

If you spiral still further into depravity, NPC guards will start attacking you, while good players begin to receive alignment boosts for (temporarily) ending your reign of terror.

Punishment of evil characters is ridiculous. Players should not be at a disadvantage for their desired play style.

[Skraeling]

It is the most open PvP I have seen in a long time, you can still kill anyone you want, and loot everything from them. Only thing not open is when it comes to your own Faction, which you can still kill just with a price. You can't compare this to WoW because in WoW, you cant attack your own faction, and PvP was worthless because all that happened when you killed someone was they got angry and had to walk back to their body.

[Preston]

Comparing DF's design system to L2 or WoW or DAoC RvR crap is wholly unjustifiable.

[Malhavok]

It is the most open PvP I have seen in a long time, you can still kill anyone you want, and loot everything from them. Only thing not open is when it comes to your own Faction, which you can still kill just with a price. You can't compare this to WoW because in WoW, you cant attack your own faction, and PvP was worthless because all that happened when you killed someone was they got angry and had to walk back to their body.

Well, considering that there is are hardcoded limitations designed to remove all evil clans from the Faction territories I'm going to go ahead and say, yes, I can compare DF factions to WoW factions. The sole difference is in DF you can declare war and then kill your own faction. Evil aligned faction members are effectively not even in your faction, or in any faction for that matter. To say that Evil clans are is to say that ARAC clans are. They suffer the exact same consequences.

Is anything preventing you from PvPing anywhere and to anyone you want?

The answer is NO... That is open pvp... If you are scared of consequences for constantly behaving foolishly than that is too bad. I can't put it any other way. You can do whatever you want...

BTW: I don't know why you keep point to SB as if it were sliced bread. It failed terribly and has since joined the ranks of numerous mmo's which tease the PvP crowd but never satisfies them...


As i've said time and time again. Darkfall is no more an open PvP game than L2. If you considered L2 to be open PvP, then you should consider DF to be open PvP. Had you stated L2 was a open PvP game a year or two ago you would have been laughed off the forums. Now, I'm not so sure. My opinion ever since the alignment fairie was introduced was "so long as it is a simple color flag with a bare minimum of hardcoded implications I'm okay with it". Others, like Ferox, wanted nothing to do with it. In hindsight, they took the correct stance. Darkfalls alignment system is no different than UO-statloss and L2 karma systems. It appears the days of Claus's "consent by logging in" are gone. I only hope that Darkfall's gameplay mechanics, RvR, and GvG systems can make up for the what is effectively consensual only PvP.

And if I it appears I'm holding SB up as the best thing since sliced bread, its because it is. Where SB failed was in implementation, not design.

[Malhavok]

Comparing DF's design system to L2 or WoW or DAoC RvR crap is wholly unjustifiable.

Thanks for that one-line piece of brilliance. Care to bother justifying that? Aside from the ability to declare war on clans in your own faction DF system is pretty much exactly like DAoC and WoW. DAoC and WoW physically prevent you from attacking your faction, DF gives you the option of exhiling yourself from your faction. At which point you might as well go ARAC because it only gives you benefits.

edit: Just a note, as I've mention earlier depending on the mechanics of declaring war, we may see the allignment system not play much of a roll at all in restricting PvP. So long as declarations of war have minimal hardcoded consequences the only thing the closed PvP via excessively punishing allignment system will do is prevent the killing of players not in clans. Further mechanics might limit the impact of clanless players. Who knows. We don't know yet. It's hard to make a complete judgement when the majority of the gamemechanics are unknown.

[Baver]

Comparing DF's design system to L2 or WoW or DAoC RvR crap is wholly unjustifiable.

You can compare some aspects to it to DAoC's PVP servers since that's more open PVP except in the main capital cities.

[Teth]

Malhavok's core point is correct - once you go evil, there is no reason not to go ARAC. You lose absolutely nothing and gain a boatload of flexibility.

[Khael[SUN]]

I like the alignment system very much. In previous ffa mmorgs the most agressive players have won too easily. This system encourages people to behave, making it difficult to play the random pk role. Just like in real life.

The alignment system paired with the fact that pvp will be skill/twitch based and let a smaller group of practised pvp'ers take on a larger group of untrained pvp'ers - makes this game extremely promising in my eyes.

[doma]

I must say, the renders look fantastic. I'm am really impressed.

[Metal Wolf]

If combat is anything like those renders Darkfall is going to be mind blowing.

[Deltoidius]

anyone have any nudie pics of the make-up sex between the ork and blonde that ensued after the fight?

[Womp]

This is going to be a good week...

[Ganondorf]

Very nice info, no limitation of player freedom is a nice principle. I wonder if there are going to be organized battles at silvertown, making it temporary conquerable or something. The empire building/pvp is what i'm looking for next to know more about, and also i wonder how many character slots do we get ? I think there are good reasons to limit character slots to 1 per account.

[strykn]

this week is going to be wicked! I'm guessing video on friday... I hope :D

[Mashed-Potatos]

Mmm...I love new info. Keep up the good work guys :D

[Tank]

Sweet, should be some nice info this week :cool:

[G.Struepp]

Thx for that info.
I wonder how alignment/reputation works inside of the group of outlaws, eg will an outlaw killing another outlaw loose reputation inside the oulaw conglomerate (i guess not), or what happens to a "paragon of good" walking to Silvertown? What qualifies you being an outlaw?
Looking fwd for more.. :)

[Stigma]

I dont think we have info on that, but it seems natural to think that silvertown is just free of restrictions. In other words, a "paragon of good" should be able to walk in there. I guess its just like any other town, except alignment is pretty much ignored. There might be guards to prevent PKing inside the city itself or it might be left completely open (in which case, you better watch your step reeeeal carefully in that town).

-Stigma

[losinglife]

i think at first i was all against the 1 character per account issue. But after readin the article i can totally see why some pple would want it.

hell right away was thinkin.. man i could totally have a spare character to turn evil and do whatever i want that wont effect my main.

woops i shouldnt have just said that now i wont be able to do it :(

[Boumakk]

No, this is not a completely open PvP system, but opening up the system more than this would lead to complete and utter chaos. This system looks good, similar to Eve Online, another hardcore PvP game, that's been up and running for more than two years (or even three maybe?) with over 70.000 subscriptions and almost 18.000 concurrent users on the same server. The only way they could have ever achieved this success is by regulating player griefing and thereby get a solid base of casual (carebear) players. The casuals are undeniably an important factor to both the in-game and RL economy of a game. If you fail to realize this as a game developer, you've already lost.

There are still enough freedom under the proposed PvP system to allow PK'ers all the PvP combat you could ever dream of cramming into an MMO. To propose a completely open system, with only a player justice system, is to propose a social experiment that is doomed to economic failure.

I love PvP and I can't wait for this game to hit release.

[The-Nit]

No, this is not a completely open PvP system, but opening up the system more than this would lead to complete and utter chaos. This system looks good, similar to Eve Online, another hardcore PvP game, that's been up and running for more than two years (or even three maybe?) with over 70.000 subscriptions and almost 18.000 concurrent users on the same server. The only way they could have ever achieved this success is by regulating player griefing and thereby get a solid base of casual (carebear) players. The casuals are undeniably an important factor to both the in-game and RL economy of a game. If you fail to realize this as a game developer, you've already lost.

There are still enough freedom under the proposed PvP system to allow PK'ers all the PvP combat you could ever dream of cramming into an MMO. To propose a completely open system, with only a player justice system, is to propose a social experiment that is doomed to economic failure.

I love PvP and I can't wait for this game to hit release.
Actually...
Asherons call had no laws and it worked great.
You could see what clan the ppl you met were in, so you instantly knew if you were gonna get attacked or not.
Was infact, one of the best, open PVP MMO games ever..
Best ive played anyway.

[Boumakk]

Actually...
Asherons call had no laws and it worked great.
You could see what clan the ppl you met were in, so you instantly knew if you were gonna get attacked or not.
Was infact, one of the best, open PVP MMO games ever..
Best ive played anyway.

We all know it takes on exception to confirm the rule, right? I regretfully never got around to playing AC as there are only so many hours in the day, and only so much neglect a gf is willing to put up with, but from guildies and friends I hear it was great. I don't know if it was the open PvP or other factors that led to it's demise (well yeah, it's still up and running, but it's not exactly at full health, more like suspended animation), so I really can't comment on that game.

I think my somewhat briskly formulated point was that an open PvP system most likely won't generate enough interest to allow for a healthy and long term product. I'm all against blatant commercialisation (WoW, probably LotR and Warhammer Online, SWG NGE), don't get me wrong, but IMO you can't make a system that alienates 95% of potential customers if you want your game to be economically viable in todays competitive market.

The full loot and fairly open PvP will make a lot of potential customers think twice about getting into the game, and that's fine by me. But if you make the threshold too high, we will be left with a dev team on a budget, crap support and downwards-spiraling staircase to oblivion. There is a balance that must be met here somewhere. Or am I wrong?

[Malhavok]

No, this is not a completely open PvP system, but opening up the system more than this would lead to complete and utter chaos. This system looks good, similar to Eve Online, another hardcore PvP game, that's been up and running for more than two years (or even three maybe?) with over 70.000 subscriptions and almost 18.000 concurrent users on the same server. The only way they could have ever achieved this success is by regulating player griefing and thereby get a solid base of casual (carebear) players. The casuals are undeniably an important factor to both the in-game and RL economy of a game. If you fail to realize this as a game developer, you've already lost.

There are still enough freedom under the proposed PvP system to allow PK'ers all the PvP combat you could ever dream of cramming into an MMO. To propose a completely open system, with only a player justice system, is to propose a social experiment that is doomed to economic failure.

I love PvP and I can't wait for this game to hit release.

Yes, but how many of those players (even the casual ones) play predominantly in 0.0 space? Empire space exists predominantly to caudal newbs. And it is needed in Eve as they are completely defenceless. How many civ gat guns would it take to bring down even a cruiser, let alone a battleship.

Both SB and AC:DT operated succesfully off player justice alone. They are the only two cases of games even attempting to allow meaningful player justice. Hell, AC:DT it was thrown in more or less as an afterthought. Was it chaotic at times? Yes. Darkfall never has been completely player justice. There are limitations hardcoded. Guards KoS enemy racial enemies to discourage ARAC.

The question is how much caudaling do you need? On one end of the spectrum is true anarchy (no NPCs, completely player defined world) on the other is a complete instanced worlds like Guildwars/Tabula Rasa/DDO. Darkfall lies somewhere in the middle. I'd prefer it to lie closer to SB and AC:DT. If you want to play a consensual PvP game there are plenty out there. Yet not a single one of them will ever feel like a living world. EVE is somewhat of a grey-zone, as it is both consensual and nonconcensual.

edit: Curse you smilies, curse you!