Items 1 through 7 can be found in Part 1 of this article.
On to the coolness:
– Rune marking and recall system like Ultima Online – Travel has always been a major issue in PVP based games. Why? Because moving large forces from one place to another rapidly and cohesively are a requirement to success in GvG (Guild Versus Guild) battle. Not to mention the desire of most RPK’s to want to get to their next slaughtering ground quickly. Darkfall will have numerous ways to travel such as ships, and mounts, but the best aspect is the ability to “mark” a location and be able to cast a “recall” type spell to return to that exact point later. This system was first seen in Ultima Online, and since then many PVP’ers playing subsequent games have, with fond memories, wished for something similar.
– Game combat speed similar to BF1942/Counter Strike – There is a huge market of gamers out there that play “First Person Shooters”. While there is some over-lap where a FPS gamer may play a MMOG, there are a great number of FPS players who dont like the click-once-and-wait-for-combat-to-be-resolved style of gameplay. By incorporating a First Person perspective and “recticule”, and removing the click-once-blah-blah combat mechanic, Darkfall may attract a large number of these FPS gamers as well as provide a new challenge to veterans of historical MMOG’s. It has been commented on by the developers that they want the game “speed” to be similar to Battlefield 1942 or Counter Strike. Can you imagine a battlefield with hundreds and perhaps thousand of players hacking, shooting, and arcane magic blasting each other with Counter Strike speeds? Excuse me while I salivate…
– Trophies – Skulls and Ears – Some UO veterans remember the good old days of carving up bodies and bagging the body parts to brag about later. Ok ok, it sounds sick and depraved, which it probably is, but in a game where l337 pvp skillz are something to be proud of you want to have something to show your ability to dominate. In Darkfall we will again see “trophies” such as skulls and ears. As long as they are marked with the names of the victems they came from pvp’ers go woot!
– Frame rate target of 30 FPS – I have a dream. A dream of a PVP MMOG where you can enter battle with many combatants and not L—-L—-L—-LAA—-AAA—-GGG with choppy frame rate or poor communication with the server because of fat net-code or cheesy bandwidth usage. Nothing is more fun than getting fired up for a good session of pvp, getting your teammates on voice comms, setting up your team with the right mix of fire power, assembling your forces, travelling all the way to where you are going to pwn your enemy, then crashing as soon as the two groups see each other on screen. Yay fun, I think Ill go watch some paint dry. While I am not saying that Darkfall will be that way, some current MMOG’s (im not mentioning names) are. The developers have mentioned that they are shooting for a target frame rate of 30 FPS regardless of the number of objects being loaded, and that the engine will compensate level of detail to get it there. For this, I am kind of jacked up.
– No safe zones – There are few things more frustrating than identifying your quarry, sometimes stalking them until they are in a good strategic position, then unloading with everything you have only to have them flee into a safe zone. Newbie zones you say? Excuse me a moment while I laugh evilly. Protected cities with super-uber guards or “non-combat” areas? Bwahahaha. There will be no such thing as a safe zone in Darkfall. If that annoying n00b next to you spews something moronic and thinks he is safe while in town you can just BLAM show him the folly of his ways. Major guild looking for some action? Just raid the GM placed cities, slaughter all the guards, and go n00b hacking all you want. Granted, not all guilds would commit such a horrendous act of butchery, but hey some would, and have been frustrated by the fact that they couldnt in past games.
That about wraps it up for this article. Please check back often for more upcoming articles. Some future articles will include a special piece with an interview with Tasos focusing on the server technology being used to power the game world, and interviews with some long-time pvp guild leaders.
-Malevolent
