There’s not much to report today. Most of the work being done right now is on the testing and the balancing of the siege system. We hope to run final tests next week before we can deploy it. We’ve also been looking through your feedback on the points we made in the siege system presentation. Thank you for that. We also understand that we’re running a bit behind our target date again but we need to make sure everything is working properly.
We also took a couple of screenshots of the intricate leather armor for you today. Some of you asked for them after we posted a short video of the armor yesterday. You should be able to see it more clearly now. We hope to have more information for you on our overall progress next week
In today’s sneak peek we present to you one of the completely new armor sets that will make their appearance with the relaunch. The intricate leather armor will be better than the leather armors that are in game right now.
We’ve been talking about the new siege system for a while now. While we have given you some of the specifics, we had to be vague on some things we were not yet sure about.
The new siege system is now complete and is going through final testing. Today we’ll present it to you in detail, leaving out only a few parts we’re still testing/balancing. As we mentioned before, we rewrote the entire system to be fully configurable. This gives us the ability to make very quick changes and to correct any imbalances that may come up when the new siege system goes live. Below we mention considering making some further changes, these can be made in no time at all. Thanks go out to Jon, who rewrote the siege system and to Vaggelis who gathered the information and wrote it up for us today:
The start of a siege is one of the few elements that have remained the same in the new system:
Your clan needs to be at war with the defending clan and you will need to use a clan shard in the vicinity of the clan stone that you wish to capture. From here on the system has changed in quite a few ways. First, clan size will affect your ability to initiate sieges. A siege against a city will require more members than a siege against a hamlet. Characters on trial accounts do not count towards clan size.
Once you use the clan shard you will get a confirmation dialogue informing you of the wager you will need to place in order to take part in this challenge. If you accept, the gold will be taken straight from the clan bank and the clan shard will be used up. If you decline, nothing happens. If there is insufficient gold in your clan bank you will not be able to initiate the challenge. Note that all attacking parties will need to pay a wager. Attacker holdings will not be going vulnerable.
The amount of the wager is affected by a few factors. First of all by the defending holding’s power level. A holding’s power level depends on how many of its’ buildings are standing. To make this clearer, a holding that allows for 10 buildings to be built will have a higher power level than a holding that allows for 5 provided at least 6 of them are actually constructed.
The second wager determining factor is how many attackers are already part of the challenge when your clan enters it. If you are the first clan declaring siege you don’t need to worry about this but the second challenger and onwards will need to pay a progressively higher wager. There is no hard cap to how many challengers can participate in the siege but the wager amount will eventually become quite high.
Joining the challenge late will also result in a higher wager. Every hour that passes since the first clan issued their challenge, means that potential besiegers will need to dig deeper in their pockets to take part in it. The same goes for ambitious conquerors that want to participate in more than one challenge, at the same time. Every additional active offensive action will result in higher wager prices.
After the challenge has been successfully declared, the attackers will have a specific amount of time to place at least one siege stone; even clans owning holdings will need to do this as, like we’ve already mentioned, their holdings will not be going vulnerable. Now, this may seem to favor the attackers but in the new system absolutely anyone can declare siege against anyone else, at the same time. So if you are going off to besiege a holding while you own one of your own, you better be prepared to defend it at the same time as your offensive action is taking place. Furthermore, if your clan drops a siege, the defenders may benefit from a wager reduction if they decide to pay you back in kind while your offensive action against them is active.
After the siege stone placement has finished, the usual preparation phase follows. One quick change we are considering is making siege stones go vulnerable some time before the clan stone does. This way we defenders a chance to take them down before they need to start defending their clan stone.
When the challenge becomes active, a certain percentage of walls will need to be destroyed before the clan stone goes vulnerable, just as it is now. Once this has been accomplished, anyone will be able to damage the clan stone. An attacker’s siege stones can be attacked and destroyed by anyone, like with the current system. However, if they are destroyed by any of the other attackers that are participating in that specific challenge (or the defender), then the destroyer’s clan will be getting a percentage of the wager paid by the siege-stone owner, right there and then. Attackers that have all their siege stones destroyed, while the clan stone still stands, are removed from the challenge and are not entitled to any of the wager money.
If the clan stone is destroyed before the challenge times out, holding ownership will pass on to whichever of the clans that had issued a challenge did the most damage. The wager money will be divided between all attackers that still had an active challenge against the holding when the clan stone got destroyed. Damage dealt to the clan stone will affect the percentage of the wager each attacker will get. Damage dealt by clans that had not issued a challenge against the holding will not be calculated for the wager distribution neither for deciding which clan gets the holding. So for example if clan-A that had active challenge does 20% damage, clan-B does 10% and clan-C, that had not issued a challenge, does the remaining 70%, the holding will pass to clan-A and clan-C would not be entitled to any of the wager money.
If all the attackers’ siege stones are destroyed or the challenge times out while the clan stone still stands then the defenders have won and they will be receiving all the wager money.
Some more things that are under consideration include restricting the use of small siege stones to hamlet sieges, and medium and large siege stones to city sieges. This will make hamlets more accessible to smaller clans as larger clans will not be able to bind as many of their members to them or benefit from the increased hit points of the medium and large ones.
We are also considering adding a variable grace period to holdings where no one will be able to declare siege on them. This grace period will be applied after a challenge has been completed and its length will depend on the outcome of the challenge. If the holding has just been successfully conquered by a clan, the grace period will be longer, allowing the new owners to settle in, rebuild and enjoy the fruits of the labours for a little while before having to defend. If the city is successfully defended then the grace period will be quite shorter.
Finally, this new siege system will bring with it a new database that will be storing all information that has to do with sieges. Every detail will be stored from who challenged whom, and when, to specifics like which clan did how much damage to a clan stone during which siege. This will help us with fine tuning the system once it goes live and we may also provide some way for players to check out holding ownership history and the like.
As you can see the new system brings substantial changes to how sieges work, and will not only eliminate issues like self-sieging, but will also make sieges a lot more strategic, profitable and interesting.
Your feedback on what we’ve posted here is, as always, greatly appreciated.
Thanks for reading.
In today’s sneak peek we have another video for you. There’s a little bit of new in quite a few things that you will see. New dungeon and new lighting system that you have already seen but also a new monster, and a new armor model. New Yssam Dungeon
Today we have some questions gathered from the Q&A posted in the community. These were answered by Elias, one of our designers, and by George, one of our programmers who are involved with the specific topics in the questions selected. Before we go into these, please allow me to address a couple of issues:
Wipe speculation: We addressed this, to the extent of our knowledge of the topic, during our last activity report when it was brought up by some members of the community in relation to Darkfall’s relaunch. This is not an issue for the present, but you wouldn’t know it looking at our forums. Furthermore the speculation and discussion about the possibility of a wipe is based on the current Darkfall status and facts. We haven’t wiped the server and we wouldn’t do it as things are now, so discussing this is pointless.
We’ll ask you to be patient a little longer until we give you all the facts on “Darkfall 2.0″ and we can have a discussion on a great number of topics, including this one.
We also read around the Internet about Darkfall going free-to-play: Rumor has it that if you start a sentence with “rumor has it…” you can say pretty much anything you want. Not true.
Also, don’t miss: this Saturday, there’s a Darkfall event taking place on both servers.
On with the Q&A questions: Q: Originally Posted by gipsi:Are you considering the idea of limiting the potential for some types of spells such as launch, wall of force, stormblast, telekinesis (prevent to overcome the city walls with a click) and to lower the cost of warkulks to use them actively during the attack, all to make the defense a real defense, and attack a real attack?
A: (George) Yes, making city walls more meaningful is a big priority for us. We are working on many things that when combined will seriously improve the defenses of a city, and one of them is the better management of the potential of the physics spells. We are really determined to make siege machinery such as warhulks and cannons a lot more useful.
A: (Elias) Even more, with the redesign of spells, skills and magic schools we will try to give a boost to the cooperation of more than one players combining different spells / skills and roles to achieve the desired result. Q: Originally Posted by Aristos:Will the subject of actual character personalization be re-addressed for the expansion? As of now, there are very few choices to pick from in terms of armor and weapons. There’s hardly any room for actual personalization.
A: (Elias) The combat gamelogic and all the gear / skills / spells have already and are still being redesigned in order to offer the players many viable gameplay choices and combinations. Q: Originally Posted by Aristos:Will we ever see a more flexible crafting system where we can truly create original armor/weapons?
A: (George) Yes! The new crafting system is a complete overhaul.
A: (Elias) We put a lot of effort into making crafting more balanced and more interesting. Expect many changes on this one. Q: Originally Posted by k4ts0u:Will you ever change the game mechanics like surges and fizzles???
A: (George) Both of these mechanics have been reworked. We will reveal more details when we properly present the gameplay changes. Q: Originally Posted by topets123:Will there be a limit of buffs that can be used on players through the magic school chosen or will it continue like now that everybody can use
all buffs?
A: (George) There are new spell trees and new rules on how different magic schools can be combined. On top of that, we concentrated on reworking the buffs (and the debuffs). So you can be sure that it won’t “continue like now”. Q: Originally Posted by Master Isaac:Will we ever see a rework of the melee AOE bringing melee AoE in line with magic AoE adjustments?
A: (George) We are determined to make the melee-focused player more viable. This includes many changes, but bringing more melee AoE is not one of them. On the other hand, you should expect that a magic-focused player capable of casting powerful AoE spells will have other disadvantages.
Q: Originally Posted by lokerrt:Will the changes to armor, weapons, and staffs render all old items completely useless, as before, or do you plan to introduce the salvage skill simultaneously with those changes?
A: (George) A new salvage skill will be available and it will play an important role in crafting.
A: (Elias) New materials and material combinations will be available as well to work in conjunction with the salvaging/dissolving skill. Q: Originally Posted by martyn1987:Will race weapons have there crafting mats added to the game to be farmed?
A: (Elias) Top rank gear is being redesigned with everything else and thus will be in the game more often than it is now. However, it may not be race gear per se as we only have 6 races and many more gear types. Q: Originally Posted by SgFg:Are you planning to bring in armor dyes/guild emblems/city flags/cloaks/tabards or something soon?
A: (Elias) We’d love to and really pushing for that direction. We’re waiting to find out the impact this has on game performance, which is our number 1 concern.
As always, thank you for reading.
Deep under the sands of Rubaiyat, in the tomb of a long forgotten royal subject of Ur-Khamset, a group of tomb raiders came upon a number of leather bound scroll cases. Inside many of these dusty cases, crumbling pieces of parchment were found. Most were too damaged to reveal any of their secrets. However, some were in good enough condition to be barely legible!
Maps marked with a red X, mayhaps even leading to ancient treasures. The raiders planned to use the maps to reveal whatever treasures could be noted by the red markings. However, it seems that Ur-Khamset takes the defiling of his subjects tombs all too seriously. The curses scrolled along the dusty walls of the crypts were more than mere decoration! One by one the hapless raiders perished under mysterious and, more often than not, quite gruesome circumstances. The last one sold all the maps to the Acolytes, hoping the curse would pass him over and on to them. He was wrong…
However the Acolytes surmise that the curse affects only those who defiled the tomb itself. Hungry for knowledge of what the maps may reveal, the Acolytes require the brave men and women of Agon to go and explore the marked locations and report back any unusual objects that they may find. Depending on what they are, a reward will be offered. Any ordinary items can be kept by the treasure hunter.
This is a Darkfall dynamic event that will be taking place on Saturday, July 16th on both servers. For the EU server the event will take place at 8 pm CEST and for the NA server at 8 pm CDT. At those times, map images will be provided and the hunt will begin. The event will not be using the gameplay mechanics for treasure hunting so shovels will not be required. You might want to bring some siege equipment along though. To inform the Acolytes of your findings a simple reply to the thread with the images of the maps will suffice.
It’s time for another sneak peek. Today we have a video for you that shows the new Chain Mail armor. Filming had to be cut short due to unforeseen circumstances…
During last week’s activity report we spoke of a relaunch for Darkfall. We had talked about major changes to the game in the past using various internal terms such as Darkfall 2010 and Darkfall Arena. So let me explain a bit more about this:
We started with the changes we had in mind for Darkfall, from all the lessons learned since the game went live and in the process we delivered 3 expansions, and more than 60 updates. About a year ago, we decided that we should branch out development and build a new game out of the one we had. This was in order to better implement the major changes we had in mind.It is not a sequel, it’s version 2.0. It’s a very ambitious project, and it’s the product of more than 2 years of lessons learned and evolving the game, and a full year of development with a much larger team than we had for Darkfall. No aspect of the game has been left untouched. It’s very much a new game, but at the same time it’s the next chapter to the game we’re currently playing.
There were concerns about wipes: We’ve considered wipes on various levels, however these are important decisions because while this is like a new game, it’s still the continuation of the current one. Also, the way things will work in the new version, it would not be as necessary to wipe, but wiping would also not be as drastic as it would be in the current version. This is a topic we’ll open up for discussion after we’ve given you more information on the new version of the game, so you can understand all the parameters involved.
There were also questions about having to pay for the relaunch version, and the answer is no if you’ve already bought Darkfall. Active subscribers will have priority in playtesting and in a developer interaction group about the new game. They will also participate in the major events that conclude the first chapter of Darkfall. The ending of the first chapter is the reason we’re bringing the relaunch version of the siege system to the current version. We expect quite a few people that have taken a break from the game to return for the exciting ending of the first chapter and the beginning of the new version.
About an ETA for this, as I mentioned in the last activity report, we’ll know more in August. As far as development goes, the major tasks are almost concluded, however there’s quite a bit of internal testing, balancing and polishing left.
I hope this clears things up a bit more, we’ll follow up with more details on the new version, as these become available.
Thank you for reading.
Media Sneak Peek is a new blog entry that we will be starting today. The goal is to provide one media file, be it concept art, screenshot, render, video or picture, as often as possible. What we want to achieve with this is to provide you with some extra insight on what we are working on as well as behind the scenes looks at the office. Sometimes we may just post something with the goal of seeing if it makes sense without any explanation and sometimes we may provide explanation of what we show, or request your feedback.
Keep in mind that due to the nature of this blog entry, the Art department may be presented more often than other things. Still, we will try and give you insight on other department’s work by posting videos.
Today’s image is something that was presented to the team on Thursday during the sprint meeting. As we have already mentioned, a lot of monsters are getting revamped and new ones are being created. The Jungle Stomper will be a monster exclusive to Yssam. As you can see the model was based on the Granite Golem and it was adjusted in the concept phase to fit the area it will inhabit. Finally you can see a 3D render of the monster. Click on the image to see the full size.
The sprint meeting took place yesterday and we presented our work and development progress to our peers. There was a film crew present that was getting footage for the making of a documentary. We’re also very happy to have one of our comrades back who was out due to health issues for almost 2 months and was sorely missed.
Before we go into the sprint meeting details, please allow me to address a few points of concern we’ve noticed within the community:
1. The Political Map we were going to launch in February, was not launched for the following reasons: Firstly, the world has changed so much due to the relaunch activities, that we need to wait for everything to be in place. Also, it is no longer just a political map, it is a complete information interface and contains everything inside the Darkfall world. Finally it has been enhanced with many more features. It’s a very powerful tool, which we are still working on and we think it will definitely be worth the wait. We apologize for not mentioning this change of plans specifically, this was an oversight. The mention of an ETA for the political map should have been followed up.
2. The new Siege System Expansion: Is still being tested and (re-)balanced. It’s a massive framework with numerous parameters and it’s taking time. I can tell you that our testers think it’s awesome and that it’s going to improve the experience in a big way. Some more info on the Siege system and a GUI element from it is available in today’s Activity Report. As for an ETA, I’m told it should be out within the month.
3. The Darkfall relaunch: First an ETA: Development should be completed sometime in August and we should know around that time when we’re going to release it and we’ll give out a release date and all the details. This relaunch is not an expansion. It’s a new game we’ve been developing in parallel with the current version of Darkfall. The scope is massive, and it has been difficult to stay on schedule after several unexpected issues we’ve had with the current version, changes and additions we decided to make for the new version, some business developments, and the decision to add the siege system into this version of the game rather than in the relaunch. There are shifting priorities having to do with business issues for this relaunch, and another part being some Asian developments we also need to take into consideration. We can assure you that everything we’re doing in this regard is in the best interest of our players and of Darkfall, and that the relaunch of the game will be very exciting for everyone.
Finally, we try to give you estimates based on our best information at any given time. This is done with the understanding that this is a dynamic environment and that priorities shift every day based on feedback from the live game and from the development process. We understand the frustration of being a player waiting for things to change. We’ve been there, and this is exactly why we’re moving forward with a complete redesign of the game incorporating the lessons learned from the current version, rather than just keep patching up this version. Please know that we are very hard at work trying to make Darkfall the best it can possibly be. We apologize for the inevitable inaccuracies in trying to predict the stages of our development cycle, but we feel it’s better than “it’s done when it’s done”.
On to the sprint meeting:
The redesign of the world continues and the designers and the worldbuilding team has been working long hours. Starting areas and NPC cities have been redesigned in a way to make them practical and easy to navigate while also improving aesthetically. We were presented details on the completed central area spawns and dungeons complexes, also of Yssam, Nifleheim, Rubaiyat and Cairn’s details having to do with dungeons, spawn redistribution and hamlets. We were also shown localized versions of monsters and monster types to suit the variety of the environments of Agon, as well as some of the completely redesigned epic monster lairs and new epic monsters. These were some really amazing details and designs.
Dungeons have continuously evolved to the point that aside of the redesigns, mob placement, new lights and environmental effects, there are also new mechanics introduced. A few nice examples were presented during the meeting: A character navigating a bridge in a massive cavern was trying to avoid massive ice spikes coming out of the walls with Yetis waiting below. Dungeons are no longer static. Doors open and close to protect boss rooms, walls shift to change the dungeon layout, shifting rocks and other contraptions will hinder progress, and various trap types will be sprung on the unsuspecting players.
The new audio system is still receiving enhancements. We’ve noticed complaints on how some of this is boring to read about, however, this audio is really exciting and innovative, and more importantly it’s designed with Darkfall’s unique gameplay characteristics specifically in mind. The music system for example is geared to enhance player immersion and isn’t something repetitive players will turn off right away. Music isn’t constant, but dynamically shifts depending on location and time of day. Day/night cycle related sounds and the dynamic weather audio system has been finalized and the quest sound notification system is also complete. The reverb effect in enclosed spaces is fully implemented and tweaked, and it makes a big difference in how these spaces feel to the player. A new system that allows us to add specific sounds to monsters and wildlife is being developed. Sounds will differ on the state the monster is in and will reflect that state. Finally audio morphing which deals with distortion having to do with player movement, is now implemented. We saw/listened to several impressive demonstrations of these systems.
The new Information Interface we spoke of above, has been getting more optimized, detailed, accurate, practical and helpful with each new build. The latest additions allow us to implement any type of marker faster and more efficiently. There are more zoom levels now that allow you to zoom in all the way to highly detailed images of individual cities.
Also the siege system we spoke of above: As we mentioned in previous updates this is a complete rewrite of the siege system. On our end it’s a siege system tool with numerous configurable parameters. There’s now a new button in the main menu named “Conquest”. This opens up a new window which lists all active attacking and defensive activities a player’s involved in. Right now, there’s no limit on how many challengers can declare a siege on the same holding at the same time. Each clan though pays a higher wager depending on how late it joins in an active challenge, how many clans are involved in the specific challenge, and how many challenges the clan has issued. As you can understand the system is completely open allowing for a single clan to declare siege on multiple holdings and multiple besiegers to contest for the same holding, all that at the same time. When it comes to attackers, scores are calculated depending on clan stone damage and in case the stone is destroyed the city will pass to whichever of the active
challengers that dealt the most damage.
The siege system is currently undergoing extensive testing: Challenge initiation, multi-attackers, multi-defenders, siege stone placement, clan size limits, challenge end scenarios and the new conquest interface are all tested and working properly. Wagers paid, wager penalties , wager division, and wall destruction are currently being tested.
The lighting system got some more enhancements, some final adjustments and some issues solved. The blood decals system got more enhancements and the blood splatter effects look really good. All new armors are now in the game and so are their icons and we heard about challenges in refitting everything. Also, 5 percent of the world’s coastline needs to be redone and we have a new vendor creation system in place which allows us to customize vendors even more.
Finally, some of Darkfall’s resources were not loaded asynchronously. A new system is now in place which will fix this and alleviate load lag experienced in various situations.
There’s a lot more that was presented during our sprint presentation meeting and we keep telling you about things we’ve seen and heard, without actually showing you most of them. The reason for this is that these are usually not presentable enough for public consumption, they are developer presentations for utility purposes. However, we’ve decided to start showing you media from our sprint presentations from now on, as long as you can keep these disclaimers in mind. Today we have a video for you of a test of some of the latest additions to the lighting system, and a siege system GUI element. We’ll show more during the course of next week.
Thank you for reading.
