Activity Report January 21
January 21, 2011 
Tasos Flambouras 
The sprint meeting has been pushed back and will happen after next week’s patch. In this patch there are significant changes to the meditation system as far as progression speed goes and cost. New skills will be available for meditation. There will also be a significant increase to overall skill gains in this patch, including for crafting skills. Following shortly after this patch there are plans to give players free meditation points, and to also add stat gain to meditation.
We are mostly working on the next expansion. The next expansion has two prongs: one involves a complete overhaul and dramatic streamlining of the world and complete redistribution of all its features. The second prong has to do with a competitive component on a completely level playing field for all players. In addition this expansion involves a completely new interface, the new environmental sound system, major changes to the crafting system, armor selection directly affecting your gameplay choices and much more. The workload is insane and we are in crunch mode because our deadline is in early Q2 2011 for this launch. This expansion combines all our Darkfall knowledge and player feedback over the past two years. We will be releasing a lot more specific information as time progresses and we’d like to include a lot of your feedback during this process. We’d like to thank you for the feedback on the armor specialization system, it was extremely helpful.
We are looking into much of your feedback over time: More meaningful player achievements in both PvP and PvE are underway. Improvements in the alignment system. Taking steps to improve the character progression experience, more epic endgame content but also new and intermediate character direction. We’ll be improving our many existing features, redoing some of them and expanding on others. We’ll be streamlining clan cities and making them more meaningful.
We are looking deep into the “grind”: We’ve taken many steps to alleviate slow character progression issues so far, and we are determined to continue adjusting character progression elements, and improving the player experience by taking specific actions like the meditation system, and the soon to come increase of drop rates to books, scrolls and stat potions.
We have been consistently taking extraordinary measures to combat cheating, hacking, the need to macro, and real-money trading. We have banned thousands of accounts to date, and 2000 accounts just this last quarter involved with gold-selling and character trading. We will additionally limit trial account functionality to further safeguard this.
Since beta we have been always fast to fix bugs wherever these pop up. Nevertheless, there are persistent bugs which are very difficult to fix because they affect many systems. We are looking into these bugs and to addressing them in a more efficient and timely manner. Performance is another issue we take very seriously, we’re constantly monitoring all big activities on both servers and how they’re coping with the load. We expect that a major improvement will come with the new user interface and with many other optimizations between now and then.
Next week after the sprint meeting we’ll have more information on our current activities based on the results of the past weeks.
Thank you for reading.
Office Talk 
Tags: Activity Report, Aventurine, Community, Darkfall, Design, Development, expansion, MMO, MMORPG, PvE, PvP, quests, Ship Combat 
cool!
Awesome ! Looking forward to it !
Anbout that Q2 deadline for expansion. If you woulda been in crunch time earlier…like last year..
If most people have to choose between Starwars TOR or the Darkfall expansion, DF will lose. =\
Just not good business timing guys.
Cool dealio
I totally /bow for your work. For me it seems very = to what i would have done if i had the knowledge to do and i believe population will increase MUCH after next expansion.
Q2? Good that u added “2011″, couse w/o that 1st question would be “what year?”
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Sounds good lets hope all this comes in a timely manner.
BY ZEUS FAT BUTT.
> There will also be a significant increase to overall skill gains in > this patch, including for crafting skills.
Are my dreams coming true? Is significant overexaggerated? Stay tuned!
Cool i hope you will fix the alignment system with the ARAC. a simple limitation of alignment points per day could punish much more newbies than ever.
Congratulation, but i have a question!
LAENIH plz
Have we’ll prestige classes or the new armor system will replace of prestige classes?
This question is important for the players not to be disappointed after.
It is better informed before to players not to cry after.
Sorry, my bad english
Thank you for your attention.
sounds cool, let’s hope that our expectations will not be deluded
Hopefully there’s still people paying until the expansion, so that we ever get it. <- Not coming back before the grind leaves
Nice, making good changes! Looking forward to next weeks patch. Looks like a bunch of people will be resubbing!
a step in the right direction AV. THUMBS UP!
Nice work! This are definitely the right changes.
Sounds exciting!
I hope it all releases on schedule!
Lets hope the population isn’t dead after this xpac.
Nice update.
Can’t wait for the expansion…
5 Must Have Improvements/Fixes in the next Expansion:
1. Player Housing/Villages : Add player housing and increase rewards (Not just more gold, creative rewards).
2. Trade Route: Much better rewards at the minimum.
3. Prestige Classes/Specialized Armor Sets: This needs to be balanced and ingame by Q2 2011.
4. Crafting Customization: Any improvement that involves more options and more creativity.
5. Raids/Missions/Quests: Something to do besides PvP thats fun, rewarding, and that you don’t need a ton of people to complete.
Getting a bit tired of all the talk. I guess any communication is good. I hope you, AV, are getting what you want out of your game. A lot of people aren’t at the moment.
Lots of praise and glory await you, AV, when you finally crack this game out of its’ shell.
Ive been following this project since 2001, and these changes sound good. We all know the timing issues by this point, and doubtless the struggles come from using a graphics platform that has been developed inhouse, rather than a boxed solution. That’s fair enough.
Im hoping the grind is addressed in a way that brings game balance back to a level that was intended in the original development concepts though, rather than simply speeding aspects along. Speed for its own sake will do nothing more than undermine the game.
Wow a lot of people crying over the games grind and still crying after av has said they’re going to reduce it. If u want to compete pvp wise quit crying about everything and play the game. And why if you hate it so much do u stick around to see what updates come then start playing again just to quit because it’s TOO HARD for u whinny girls. What are you? On a strike? Lmao Jesus Christ…. In what MMO is it fun to play and be at the end game in a week (which it seems everyone wants this game to be like). Part of the fun for me is the build and the feeling of success because I put in a lot of hard work to get to the top.
Hmm, after thinking about stats to meditation system, that’s actually a bad idea (if meditation stays in it’s current offline format).
You would end up having a lot of players staying logged out for weeks at a time just to raise stats. So while it’s good that you’re thinking about increasing stat gain, the current meditation system really isn’t going to help. The population will just stay logged out.
I suggest that the best route is to make it so stats increase much faster on pve mobs and harvesting nodes. This accomplishes 2 things:
1. people that pve will see good stat gains, while those macroing on other players will not (combats macroing). By being active at the computer, you are being rewarded significantly for your time.
– I would honestly suggest that stats should not raise at all against other players. This would combat macroing to some extent. Keep the current skill gain speed the SAME when using spells/skills on other players.
2. players will be logged in the game more often and mob spawns will be more active which will result in more pvp and interaction.
Yes, players that exploit mobs will still get the upperhand, but it is up to you developers and GMs to hunt these cheaters down.
I hope the meditation attribute gains are decent so afk swimming becomes obsolete!
+1
Reminder : since hunting critters was very worthwhile (x3 gains), this stopped the ‘bloodwall’ behaviour almost completely!
Currently, Meditation would have to be more efficient than AFK Swimming (and Running), which gives you 3 Attributes gains for free. Hard to beat. Just saying in case AV might somehow miss that point.
( I would personally, if I was AV, flush all gains for swimming, running and sprinting beyond skill level 100, but replace these with a Meditation system that would be fair to older and newer players.)
Very good news. Will the expansion include also the new character/armor models you showed something like 6 months ago and the new animations you worked on with your motion capture studio? Oh..and what about prestige classes?
Thank you for your constant work on improving this game!
Excellent !
A new UI is -exactly- what Darkfall needs AV! Heck that could be an expansion in itself really.
Though I think if Darkfall comes with a cookie in the box edition it would sell better too. A good cookie, none of that viscoti stuff the greeks love so much.
why not cut down on gold selling and boost sells by implementing in game subscription cards that can be bought and traded in game? i hear it works on EVE, i would love to trade gold to someone for a subscription when i am low on RL money
i’ve been playing the game for a few days now. i love the graphics no matter what anyone else complains about. the immense world and i LOVE the grind. all in all a great game. a new ui will do wonders for it. skill progression doesnt really need to be faster. they made that mistake with everquest, dark age of camelot, age of conan, warhammer, and more. making life easier to gain levels/skill isnt the answer. keep the grind.. its what gives you the sense of accomplishment.
what could be added is a noob tutorial, something that
1) shows noobs the game and lets them see the wonder and glory and become accustomed to the controls before someone cuts off their head.
2) protects said noobs for a few days (or certain skill level) from the would be gankers who seem to have nothing better to do than harass people who are new to the game. its hard enough to skill up, much less when you have someone killing you every time you approach your already empty grave. noob camping is pointless and will only cause a loss in customer base.
Also, perhaps a dying system that would allow players to change armor and weapon colors (who cares if i only get to keep it for 20 minutes, it looks cool anyway).
impose a more harsh penalty for the ‘gank groups’ who harvest people from the cities/towns. come hither is wonderful, but when a ‘neutral/friendly’ faction player pulls you out of the city so that his buds can gank you, its a bit too much.
5) for true siege warfare, the city, castle or other walled establishment has to be defensible. whats the point to having walls when people can simply rabbit hop over them? in several cities rabbit hops are optional entertainment only. players can simply climb the hill and walk in regardless of the fact that those annoyingly weak towers keep making my hair stand on end. higher walls, make me beat down the door to get in, not cheat and hop in. the trojan’s didnt have bunny hop….
6) merchants and quests, to make that ‘grind’ as everyone is calling it less grindish, more quests, more options and different/better rewards. more merchants, all those buildings, all those doors and only 4 people in the city? wow, i feel like i’m in a ghost town.
7) equalization– as i previously mentioned, noobs have it hard, what with the gimply “i cant kill anyone else so i’ll kill a noob” crowd and all. perhaps some system in place where that guy/gal with 200 or 300 in a combat skill (any.. magic, weapons) cannot attack someone with a skill of 45 in their chosen combat skills.
While these suggestions will i’m sure bring about great protest from those who joyfully exploit these issues. It would bring more customers to the game and make it more enjoyable for those trying the game.
i personally know of 8 people who’ve left the game within 5 days of starting the trial account due to being unable to go more than 30 minutes without instantly being dead because of someone else’s boredom.
PvP is fine but give people the ability to enjoy the challenge, to enjoy this enormous landscape and beautiful work of art that is Darkfall.
Very good and mature suggestions in my opinion.
Message to players : we should go out and fight newbie killers and protect them from idiots such as the GPS clan. You can travel newbie areas to help out.
i just got zerged at mar shral
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