Darkfall Activity Report: More community feedback
December 03, 2010 
Tasos Flambouras 
We’re preparing for the next patch as our immediate priority, and in this next patch we have added offline meditation, several bug fixes, an auto-stacking update for equipped items, a new Sea Fortress Schedule, and more. The patch is coming next week, due to some persistent bugs which kept us from launching it sooner.
The sprint schedule is running as planned, much of the same things we have been working on, continue. We’ll go into this in more detail next week after the sprint presentation.
We’d like to thank our players for taking our suggestion last week and sending more feedback our way. The community liaisons collected more feedback and suggestions from the forums and I’d quickly like to address some of these today:
There was quite a bit of feedback having to do with issues related to the user interface, example: a suggestion for a visual indicator on the chat interface, how much bank space you have left, or horizontal hotbars. These will be addressed with the new GUI so we won’t comment on them right now. As we have mentioned our new GUI is going to be completely different. We do want your feedback and ideas however so please keep them coming.
We’re looking into feedback and suggestions concerning Destroyer and Indestructible and at the moment we see a lot of room for exploitation following several otherwise good suggestions. We’ll keep looking into this.
The use of one handed melee and shield has been brought up as a topic and on our end we have been looking into ways of making shield blocking more reactive than active.
The issue of (one man) clans, being able to war everyone is an issue high in our agenda and we’ll start taking action to curb this in the next couple of patches.
Regarding ship construction, we’re planning on offering more types of craftable ships in NPC cities, and we’ll move forward on allowing ship de-spawning only to the helmsman. Also swimmers with designs against a boat are going to have to think twice, or risk getting blown up.
We like a suggestion of not allowing hostiles to use clan banks and we’re going to implement it. We also like a suggestion of system messages being disabled when watchtowers are destroyed, until they are repaired.
We will make smaller treasure maps available.
“Bunnyhopping”: it’s a complex and sensitive issue. We want to balance it without penalizing skill. Rest assured that we’re looking at this very closely. On a related topic: death from falling is something we’re also looking into. Dungeon logging is another complex issue to fix but we are working on it.
Finally, a request and discussion on making crafting more involved finds us in agreement, but for this we’re looking to the next expansion.
Your suggestions are not simply commented on; they are quite often acted on. We’ve been doing this since day one, but we’re happy with the new workflow having to do with handling your feedback. We’re not talking about long-term hopes when we say we’re looking into something or working on an issue. If we talk about it, there are developers assigned to it and community liaisons following up on progress. Many of your suggestions will be acted on as soon as the next couple of patches. There are numerous other suggestions we have scheduled for future use, when our workflow allows us to.
We’d like to ask you to keep the excellent feedback coming.
Thank you for reading.
Office Talk 
Tags: Activity Report, Community, Darkfall, Developer, Development, feedback, MMO, MMORPG, patch, Scrum, Ships, sprint, Team 
Every Tasos post gets better than the previous, keep up the good work AV.
Good read but there is no mention of the grind, which has been suggested on the forums a thousand times over and over again.
You know all those PvP videos that you guys love? That you spotlight?
Those characters got to that level by macroing and using programs to level their melee weapons.
New players have no chance of catching up to those who did it, and yet this issue has still not been resolved?
I hope you realise that majority of the top PvP players complain about the grind and loath it and AFK macro / melee macro in groups.
I hope you realise its the grind that is essentially stopping new players from ever being competitive.
On a totally unrelated issue, you need to work on dynamic spawns or more spawns for newer players, I went back to human lands the other day and found 4 BRAND NEW players trying to finish their very first quest at a goblin spawn with like 4-5 goblins?
Whats going to happen if you get a flux of new players and they can’t level up due to the lack of newbie spawns?
This needs thought.
Leveling melee skills is not a big problem, I joined game 3 weeks ago and already approaching mastery with 2 weapons!! I have no idea why you mention need for macro.
Because some people likes to brag what they read on ForumFall. The grind is fine as far as you don’t grind. Just level to the few main skills and spell, some active people are at this point at the end of the 2 weeks trial, then play the game.
k scrub
Whining about wrong issues can only hurt the game. The full leveling is designed to be long, you want instant gratification, go find another game.
as i said, scrub.
You know I’m right gosu.
stop forumfalling and open your eyes
I don’t Forumfall, I actually play the game. Forumfall and you keep whining about the grind instead of playing. Here, we have an awesome post full of excellent news, and all you can do is whine about the grind. How stupid does that sounds ?
You can’t judge the grind based on one thing. It doesn’t take very long to level a melee skill if you focus on it but that has very little to do with the “grind” in darkfall. If individual skills is all your looking at then you will never understand.. well, not until your a year + into the game and you don’t macro, then you’ll see what everyone is talking about.
I play since beta bro. I’m not looking to be maxed, I’m playing and enjoying the game, even if I don’t have WoF…
stop crying about the grind
Very interesting post, cheers!
Excellent. Thank you.
“Dungeon logging” isn’t that much of an issue.
Just add a timer to use the portal, as you have for the chest.
The said timer must stop if you take some damages or if you’re knocked back. Then, you must also remove the “portal crash” thingy.
But that’s your job to think about it, rite ?
Keep up the good work, as someone said : tasos’s posts are getting better and better. :3
I’d like to add that i still want a nice cursor with the new gui.
>> http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=229961&highlight=cursor
haha styrr! xD
You really need to have higher quality picures on these updates so we can click them and see what everyone is really doing in your office XD
http://www.darkfallonline.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/report03122010.jpg
The first guy on the left looks like he is working on the sound mapping for the environmental sounds.
Indestructible should be merged with Mage-Hunter to always give the buffs, say 5 Magic Protection and 15hp. Instead of only having either active using the weapons.
Active while wearing a staff aswel.
So should Mage-Killer and Destroyer be, forming a specialization that increases overall damage by 10-25% against people that have recently worn a staff.
Magic spells are buffed here aswel.
Xipher wrote on the forums that Weight of gear(not encumbrance exactly) should affect how much knockback you get contra how much bunny jumping effect you can get. Couldn’t that be something to explore? Having loads of stone on you to prevent knockbacks.
About GUI, don’t think this was what you referred to in Stackable Equipped items.
Could you make it so people can drag items to the same slot on the bar. Sword + Board to unite, Rank 60 on a Rank 50 and a rank 0 to start with.
This makes it feel like you are “ready to go” allot faster.
If you get killed, you can instantly equip your rank 0 without having to go through your whole(ops gone) inventory to find it.
Mages can already hop much better than tanks . ..
With any of the magic penalized specializations you won’t have all the current bunny-jump abilities at your disposal.
That would mean that any changes that prevent knock-back would be a + for you.
And with that those using Metal Armor would be allot safer, specially if it affects wall of force aswel, making you virtually immune to it.
And wearing mounts etc would affect your weight, so it’s not like people wouldn’t be affected just by wearing bone. Having allot of regents on you would matter aswel.
Those using a robe however, a robe and nearly nothing, they would be mobile.
However, main point of that thing would be to make those using metal-gear, immune to knock-backs and wall of force.
I’m fairly certain the current amount of bunny-jumping will be tuned down anyway, so judging that change by the current standards wouldn’t be fair.
hmmm, smells gd
Cant wait!!
B d way i like how a lot of issues are being brought up…before it seemed they didnt care at all actualy.
very nice thread !
Excellent post Tasos, I have to say the only disappointment here is having to wait yet another week for the update LOL
Bunny hopping is one of the things that make this game so much funner that it is hard to log into other games.
Please keep that in mind!
” Dungeon logging is another complex issue to fix but we are working on it. ”
Tasos you silly newb. If you are finding trouble fixing easy things like this, just go and ask some of the vets.
Add a 10 second cast timer to use a portal, if attacked the cast timer is broken.
Done.
Suggestion: GUI
Add the remaining time in buffs
I think the specs could use a little bit more love to help compete with all the buffs hybrids get.
Dear AV,
I really like the meditation system you are coming out with. But unless you make it better than AFK swimming, or zero risk macroing on a raft in the middle of the ocean, why would people use it?
Offline skilling should be an equal or better option than AFK skilling. If you want to keep the meditation feature for magic, then at least let it level up all the sub skills for a magic tree like intensify and durable spells as well as maybe one or two spells within that tree at a time.
Also, if you are going to reward people more for being offline more, you must conversely reward them for being online more to keep the balance. Therefore you should really look into increasing the stat and skill gains from PvE.
And as a sidenote, if you also increase the gain rate of buffs and debuffs by a magnitude of about 10x, people could level these spells organically through use.
great you’ve mentioned some of the bigger problems on the moment, hope you deal with them good
Hey there. Another Bloodmoon Brigand here.
The ability to upgrade guard towers would be great.
Also the ability to use furniture such as seats and desks etc in player cities would be great for us roleplayers.
Another idea is an equipable flag that is dropped on knockout that can be used for impromptu clan games of capture the flag. Or even better a throwable football.
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thank u for thee update. Take a look at the speed people can reach in water hopping vs ship speed plz.
Ship are like snails
I love the idea of watchtowers and system messages being related, and I’m really happy that bunny hopping, dungeon logging (just add a timer! Not that complex.) and one handed sword use are both being addressed. A few other things that I believe seriously need to be addressed as well: fizzles, wall of force (still is too powerful of a spell- mechanics need to be changed rather than schematics), magic knockups (mainly magma storm), and eye rot. The blind of eye rot should be affected by the recent AoE change as well. The farther away you are from the epicenter of the spell, the shorter the duration of the blind is.
More thoughts on the specs, the melee ones should be alot more useful sick of every one being hybrid and being forced to use magic to compete.
Gives people who want to be pure mage too a option. maybe +15% to all magic heals attacks etc but block all armours except robes.
Also more sand in the box.. funhulks is silly and lame I would much rather see an effort to create a social aspect to the game like taverns with player bards and dancers etc that gives buffs.
I think all current specializations should be either scrapped or merged with incoming prestige classes.
About the GUI, theres no mention of making buttons like whirlwing universal in all weapons. Its a pain in the ass to have multiple weapon skills.
Now that we are at it you guys could also add the ability to merge spells like stoneskin/ironskin, heal self/heal other, brawn/hymn of might so that I only needed to click key 1 to activate my stoneskin/ironskin spell association then click left mouse button for stoneskin or right mouse button for ironskin.
Or even make a single hotkey for pulling sword and shield up.
plz stop crying about the grind, you destroy the game