There are approximately 300 skills in this game with prerequisites for certain skills. Some of the easier skills, like swimming, take less time to learn.
There are also no levels in this game. Monsters and creatures do not have levels either. They simply get tougher the farther you walk out of the newbie areas. The only way to know whether you can take them out is to try it. And unlike certain MMOs where you can find platemail on a rat, Darkfall will have none of that. What you see is what you get. On that same note, if you fight an orc that's using an axe but then switches to a club, when he dies you will be able to loot both the axe and club off of his body, as well as his armor and the contents of his entire inventory.
Helland explained that the AI in the game would be far more advanced than what gamers are used to seeing in other MMOs. "The AI mimicks players as much as possible," he said, "like Quake bots."
The AI is also smart enough to notice when people are camping spawns. In-game events can be triggered to stir things up, encouraging parties to continue exploration rather than stay in one spot.
Besides the advanced AI treatment, the in-depth alignment and notoriety dynamics and the detailed political and economic systems, Darkfall also has a rather ambitious combat system. You can do battle on mounts, fire shots from ships at sea and fight on foot. In fact, when your guild wages war, it will be likely that they utilize cavalry, army and navy units all at once in these battles. Yes, that's right. Darkfall features naval combat in a fantasy MMO. Even maintaining supply lines in battles will be necessary for people who respawn since all of your possessions remain on your corpse when you die. Crafters will most certainly have an important role to play in this game to make use of resources and keep troops outfitted. This makes controlling mines or other sources of materials key to PVP.
Wars will not be waged lightly. Once a guild declares war on a town, that guild must wait a certain amount of time (still undetermined by the developers) before they can capture it. This gives the defending guild time to organize a counterattack. Once a guild declares war, the two battling guilds do not take alignment "hits" when killing each other. In other words, you can kill the opposing guild as much as you want while you are warring with them without becoming evil.
Guilds have a number of tools to help organize themselves, including the ability to set up platoons, identify waypoints and utilize map coordinates. On that note, part of the challenge is to coordinate these battles without falling into total chaos. Friendly fire is enabled and there is no radar in the game to show the location of friendly or enemy troops. This challenge makes the outcome of most battles fairly unpredictable.
The developers also plan to have some interesting physics in the game. A cannonball shot off a ship can not only damage but physically disorient an entire party by blowing them away. Or you could jump off of a big rock and hit someone in the head with an axe causing more damage with the momentum of your fall. And unlike many MMOs, the damage is not determined from a dice-based hit system. In Darkfall, damage is calculated in real-time like a first person shooter.
As for how the combat looks, you can see physical bleeding and armor decay as you beat someone down. "We do have decapitation and skull crushing in this game," says Oren smiling.
In fact, if your rather just crack people's skulls open all day and you really hate PVE (or player-vs-environment), you can level entirely from PVP in this game. Dualing other players allows you to increase your weapon skill, and there is no alignment hit for killing a guildmate.
As I was listening to them describe all of the features to their game, I thought to myself, "It's far too ambitious." Too many features crammed into one game usually ends badly. You lose quality for quantity. However, after sitting with them for four hours, it became increasingly apparent that if anyone had enough passion and drive to do it, it would be these guys. Although the game draws much inspiration from Ultima Online and Shadowbane, unlike both of those MMOs, they don't plan on releasing it until they are content that it's a finished product.They are making the game that they have always wanted to play and they will not compromise. They know they're catering to a niche market and they're content doing so. And if they don't get a publisher, they are prepared to self-publish to see this vision become a reality.
Will they pull it off? It's that stubborn streak in them that makes me think that they just might do it. And if they do, it has the potential to be a real gem to the PVP community.
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