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Reader Comments (5)

Posted: Feb 19th 2009 4:55PM (Unverified) said

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Nice review. Reminds me a lot of Shadowbane and Asheron's Call (Darktide server). This will be a niche game as I don't think most will be able to handle it because of the corpse looting (and failing to recongnize that this actually helps police the bad behavior you see in other games).

That said, the alignment system seems ripe for exploitation.
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Posted: Feb 19th 2009 6:15PM wjowski said

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If games like Darkfall police bad behavior why do they seem to draw so many career griefers?
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Posted: Feb 20th 2009 5:57AM (Unverified) said

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Because of the opportunity to loot others - which is really just a euphemism for depriving others of something they value. The thing is, when you resort to griefing tactics, the players tend to police their own - particularly in games where the politics are highly developed (as will be the case in this game). Also, the one character per server mechanic helps as well - you can't log off and log on to the safety of another anonymous toon.
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Posted: Feb 20th 2009 11:42AM (Unverified) said

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It seems like it would police it, but it does not.
No matter what you do with the alignment system people will find a way to abuse it.

Then they will go out gank a few people, go back to town and bank most of the loot. They will do this over and over until someone kills them.

And you are right they will get looted, but so what? They stashed all their real loot in the bank before heading out to gank others. Big whoop you got enough loot that they may have to loot 2 whole other people before they are back to even.

Back in UO, people realized the best and quickest route to riches and power was to gank other people. As soon as people started hunting them, they just moved off to another area and started up there. Or heck just logged off for 20min.

If people in the real world were punished by the police for killing someone by having them take all the stuff on them, we would have non-stop murders and theft. What keeps them from doing that is not the loss of a tiny % of their stuff, it is the chance that they are going to be locked in a small room for a LONG time with someone who thinks they are pretty.

Until a MMO finds a way to allow real punishment, then open PvP worlds are just a place to see who can abuse the systems the best. Yall have fun.
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Posted: Apr 21st 2009 4:19PM (Unverified) said

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I think a lot of the replies to your comment are erroneous in tone and understanding.

It is a correct notion that corpse-looting produces a better environment. People DO police their own. People may have a bad streak, and prove that they can be hooligans, robbing and looting, and trash-talking, but, it won't last forever. These kinds of people eventually meet their downfall, unless they are of ridiculous skill and intelligence.

Look to EVE online for examples of this. Becoming a career pirate is very difficult to do successfully in that game. You literally have to put everything on the line, and then will likely end up spending the majority of your time afterwards trying to recoup your losses rather than find new sources of income.

That's because people don't like to be messed with... and while you might be a power-griefer, you won't be likely able to hound individual players into nothingness, but, as your rating decreases and people see that you are a KOS-monster, the community at large most certainly WILL hound you into nothingness, taking everything you have at every turn.

The impact of the cruel, unreasonable, griefing individual can be easily kept in check with realistic game mechanics. WOW fails at this, and that's why the PVP servers in WOW are pointless to play on. DAOC was a little better, but changing the rates and the way teleporters were laid out made it very conducive to perma-gank squads... even still though, too bad of a reputation would get you crushed on the PVP servers (See: Slayers guild).

Most people recoil from the thought of having their loot taken off of their corpse... but, in reality, your gear should never be that important. Realistically, a sword is a sword... some swords better than others, but, by how much? A gun is a gun, some better than others, but really by how much? If you think that the differences scale from one .45 caliber pistol doing 20 damage, and another doing 500, as would be the case in World of Warcraft or Everquest, you're mistaken...

That is a fantasy loot abstraction technique, and, it holds no place in realistic games where you can be looted. You also won't have to raid for 50+ hours to complete a suit just to have it taken away from you... as the focus will not be therein.

Anyway, I'm not saying the game will be the best ever or even good... just that the notions of realism that are trying to be preserved are in the correct vein of how games SHOULD be made... while EVERQUEST cloning is over... no matter how many "Arthas" storylines you want to make up, to entice your rabid legion of fanboys... the mechanics of modern MMOs are old, and, this is something at least slightly fresh.

Try it, or remain ignorant... the choice is yours, I've played every major MMO, and as a gamer of over 24 years, I have to say, the current format is now as old and overdone as the standard side-scrolling platformer was in 1995.

http://www.judgex.com/

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