Inaccurate Forum Titles

[greeneggsnoham]

Does anyone else find the titles "Melee/Archery Role" and "Magic Role" misleading?

In darkfall as it stands at the moment, there are two roles - Crafter/harvester and PvP.

Crafter/harvester - Usually someone's alt. Spends most of his game time gathering from nodes within city limits, advertising in the trade channel or crafting at work stations - most often crafting arrows

PvP - Wears the heaviest armour he or she can get away with, wields either a two handed sword OR a pole arm. Spends most of his or her time either firing arrows at or hitting afk friends or hidden away casting self buffs to grind up a magic school

The above is an exaggeration of course, but I'm making a point here. There is no specialization in Darkfall at the moment, and too many of the potential "roles" are gimped to make them attractive. The problems are:

1) One handers are effectively useless. If you have a low ping and are willing to work your ass off learning how to play the block/attack thing, you can be almost as good as someone using a pole arm. Or, you could just use a pole arm like 80% of the server population.

Before you say "l2play" my one handed mastery is above 50. I resisted going with pole arms because everyone else was using them and I wanted to build a unique character. I just tried pole arms today and I'm now wondering why I bothered at all with one handers.

Finally, if you still insist on telling me that I don't know how to play, check out some of the videos of the top PvPers on the server. Let me know when you see one wield a one handed weapon.

2) There is no variety between weapons. All have the same skills (knockback, power attack, whirlwind, mastery). The only difference is range and damage, which means that the only difference is that some are good and others are less good and the rest suck.

3) There is no reason to specialize. Everyone, with enough grinding, can have strong magic AND ranged AND melee skills.

So, for the reading challenged:

TL;DR - There are no roles in combat in Darkfall. There are only ranges - melee range, magic range, and archery range.

[FailFall]

they allow you to be multiple things, thats what makes it a good game

no, everyone will not be the same.

someone will have polearms, archery, fire/earth magic, witchcraft, 1h axe

someone else will have greataxe(2h), archery, water/earth magic, spellchanting, 1h swords

everyone is already different. also different races, armor, skill stats, crafting stats make a difference

some people don't gather all day, others have 70+ strength/vitality, 50+ intellect from grinding tradeskills as well as magical schools

no one is forcing you to pick up 1 of each attack, but if you choose not to, its your fault.

2h axe, sword, polearms is all good for close range 1v1
mounted combat requires 1h, so you will need that to even use your pony skills
1h with shield is useful, if you can't make it to your friends just parry/block/stam drain till your reinforcements are there
magic is good for killing groups with AOE damage splash, also good if they run from you
archery is good mid-long range and when they run from you
when your sitting at full health, 25% stamina, 100% mana sprint around spamming fireballs and mana -> stam
when your full stamina, low mana, sprint around shooting your bow or meleeing

the choice is yours

personally, when i attack someone who is gathering/etc i hit them with a fireball in the back for ~60, then if they run and are naked i generally use archery and kill them, if they choose to fight i beat on them with polearms

edit: 1h should never beat 2h in a 1v1 situation, ever. now 1h with shield vs archery does win, as long as you can keep the arrows in the shield and not your back. l2play.

[greeneggsnoham]

edit: 1h should never beat 2h in a 1v1 situation, ever. now 1h with shield vs archery does win, as long as you can keep the arrows in the shield and not your back. l2play.

ARchers hold their arrows while your shield is up. You lose stamina, they don't. You drop your shield, they release. Most of the time the pause between releasing the block and raising it again prevents you from blocking the arrow. When someone does this to you, you'll see that if you ever do catch them, you'll start fighting with half stamina, while they're still at full.

One handers are useful because they enable you to use mount attacks. However, the actual skill you have in the one hander rarely makes any difference at all. I can do a side attack in the front for 45+ damage, but someone with zero one hander skill still does 33 - 40, and can do 50 damage with a front or back mount attack. The difference made by having skill in one handers is almost insignificant.

When you start fighting people who are swinging rank 40 two handers with 50+ mastery, you'll realize how useless parry is. Each time they hit your shield you drain about 7 stamina from them, but they drain you for 6, plus the stamina cost of holding your shield up, plus they do 5-8 damage with each hit. My parry is 100 btw.

You obviously are still spending most of your time in the newb zones if people are shooting arrows into your shield, or if you can hold people off for more than 10 seconds with parry. Go pick a fight with the Afghan alliance, and see how viable one hander and shield is.

personally, when i attack someone who is gathering/etc i hit them with a fireball in the back for ~60, then if they run and are naked i generally use archery and kill them, if they choose to fight i beat on them with polearms

Thanks for proving my point. You, like everyone else, do not fit into the roles the above forums pretend exist in darkfall. We all do the exact same thing. There is no real uniqueness to each player's character. Each character has the same strengths and weaknesses, and follows the same progression. there is no "Magic Role" or "Melee/Archery" role. We all do both roles, depending on the range of our opponent.

Basically, darkfall at the moment is like an FPS and not like an MMO at all. Each character has the same stats and uses the same techniques. The only difference between darkfall and an FPS is that darkfall has a huge grind. We all start the same (weak with no skills) and end with the same characters (mage/two hander melee/archer).