We had the Scrum planning meeting on Wednesday instead of Monday as originally planned, so I don’t have a debriefing for you yet. We’ll get to that next week, so this week we can talk about something else: The community liaisons have been collecting information, feedback, suggestions and recommendations from the community for quite a while now and they’ve put together a document. I was part of a meeting where some of the issues in this document were discussed along with the lead developers. I’ll give you a brief overview, since most of this information will be passed along in more detail by the community liaisons over time:

Newbie experience feedback discussed in detail. Various items of convenience were brought up, like a rest skill key for example, making the starting experience more intuitive on several levels like the chat system and chat options, various location markers and indicators, tips, and making the Darkfall experience more intuitive for players coming from other MMOs and much more. This is a topic of great importance for us and we might call it the newbie experience but changes in this should improve the general player experience as well.

The User Interface suggestions were many, ranging from fundamental issues needing rethinking to party tabs, crosshair location, magic school skill level, to making system messages more prominent and much more. Since the GUI is getting completely remade, it was a good opportunity to bring up everything that’s been discussed over time. The GUI is another major improvement field for us and all the community feedback on this is quite valuable in the new design.

Crafting will go through several fundamental changes; a small example of this is that players will get the basic skills by default. Most of the player feedback and suggestions having to do with crafting were passed on to the development team, will be evaluated and considered.

Changes and improvements to questing and the quest journal were discussed. The timing is good since questing is currently receiving a lot of attention by our designers. Some of the issues raised had to do with the max number of quests, a quest tracker, quest sharing, highlighting quest objects, bigger rewards from quests and much more.

Additionally, new trade route missions feedback and information was discussed along with future sea fortress changes, on making them go live during peak hours. Solo player combat mechanics and party mechanics were also brought up with feedback on the solo player experience and recommendations on how to make solo players more self-sufficient. Party number limits were also mentioned.

Feedback on mounts was presented and several suggestions were looked at. The possibility of a variety of mount upgrades was discussed.  Community feedback on gear and items is consistent with internal plans of armor choices taking more of a role in one’s chosen playstyle and being directly tied in with the considerable upcoming improvements to the skill and spell system. Along the same lines is the concept of the creation of specialized gear, i.e. for harvesters.

When it comes to ships, the much requested capability of being able to attack players in the water, or otherwise protecting the ship from swimmers has been explored by developers for a while now. Fishing boats were also an internal suggestion and are a definite possibility.

During the PvP and contest mechanic feedback discussion, among other things, the issue of political and strategic decisions made more meaningful is something we agree with, along with issues having to do with the ease war is declared now and how to address this, and various exploits in siege mechanics such as the use of proxy clans.

We agree that as far as alignment goes, going red is too forgiving when it needs to be more of an active decision with implications for the player.

The feasibility of player housing in or around NPC cities, or auction houses were also brought up. Feedback on the economy was presented and a lot of it is consistent with our development plans. Several clan mechanics, and weather system feedback was also presented.

Finally, direct player quotes were passed along to the lead developers. Another document with balancing proposals was also delivered but has not been discussed yet due to time limitations.

I believe that this meeting was very useful for the developers getting a rounded presentation of player feedback, but also for the community liaisons that now have a better understanding of Darkfall development in relation to player feedback and will be better able to communicate on this in the future. Most of all, a communication process like this can only benefit the game.

As you can see, your constructive feedback is very important to us. Please keep it coming and rest assured that it is always taken into consideration.

Thank you for reading.