Darkfall: Unholy Wars

Greetings fellow Darkfallers!

As of today we will begin a series of posts addressing most, if not all, of the questions you asked through the Community Darkfall Unholy Wars Q&A thread. We would like to thank you for your passion and dedication and hope that many of the great aspects of Darkfall Unholy Wars will come to light through this series of answers.

Without further delays, here is the first one:

Will there be a system put in place that will cause death upon falling from a great height? Will "Hulk-Jumping/Bunny Hopping" be removed permanently in 2.0?

Falling Damage has been increased to reach the cap damage of the game. If your remaining health is lower than the fall damage you receive you fall unconscious to the ground.

The damage scales from minimal up to the cap according to the vertical speed that the character has at the time of impact on the ground.

The height that you start getting damaged (e.g. built enough vertical speed) is a little over the height of the double-jump.

In actual gaming terms this means that you have to be really careful jumping when running down a slight slope or you will get damaged.

On the counter act side of things, as we like to promote players skill, we incorporated a new skill called "Break Fall" that can actually reduce your vertical speed when cast.

At high levels this skill almost drops your vertical speed to zero so it acts as an air brake. If you time it correctly, you can jump from a cliff and not get any damage at all. It has a long cool-down though, so jumping off cliffs should be a conscious choice now.

Here goes another answer for your questions:

Q: Will you ever remove the disadvantage you get by picking certain races rather than others?

Through many lengthy design meetings and suspense-filled negotiations we finally concluded that certain racial differences only added confusion and hindered the overall Darkfall experience. We want you to be able to choose the race you like and get right into the fray without having to worry about the pros and cons as far as game-play goes.

As it stands now, the only differences between the races will be their unique looks and their lore. If you want to play an Ork you should do so because you love being a vicious, green, slaying machine without having to worry if some other race has better combat advantages.

In Darkfall Unholy Wars, your bragging rights should come from your skill in the kill, not from whether your race is better suited to a particular situation.

Many of the changes we have made have been with the philosophy of allowing you to get right to what makes Darkfall: Unholy Wars fun as smoothly as possible!

Last one for today, Darkfallers!

We will get back to you with more answers in the next few days, so stay tuned...

Could you possibly explain how exactly the armor system is supposed to work?

I think you maybe mean the Role system?

While Darkfall: Unholy Wars is still a game that uses skills instead of classes to determine abilities, we have introduced Roles which determine which skills are available to a player at any one time. This prevents some of the imbalance of Darkfall 1.0 where a heavily armored fighter could still use magic almost unhindered, and greatly increase the importance of tactics and teamwork. It also goes some way to helping players make their characters ready for end-game PvP without such endless grind.

Roles are not classes, but temporary specializations. The game will eventually include four (4): Elementalist (mage), Primalist (priest), Warrior (fighter), and Skirmisher (ranger).

A Warrior has access to a range of melee, defensive, and combat oriented skills. A Skirmisher has access to light weapon and bow skills. A Primalist has access to priestly magic. And an Elementalist to powerful magery.

Only the skills and spells from your current role (and the common school) are available to you but your current role can be switched with a cooldown. This allows you to try out each and every role, even multiple times in a day. Need some heavy firepower to defend your city walls? Try the Elementalist role. Keen to form the vanguard of a field battler? Switch to Warrior. Planning for an afternoon of exploration and guerrilla warfare? Try the Skirmisher.

While you are not limited to which role you can choose, your effectiveness in each is determined by the level of your spells/skills, attributes, and battle prowess. This allows a player with fewer in-game hours to quickly become effective and dangerous in one role, while a more dedicated player can take the time to explore and master multiple roles.

Hello community! As we promised, we respond today to one more of the questions you asked in the Community Q&A thread:

Will lore bosses be added (demi-gods), and will the other end-game monsters receive new and more complex AI? Like becoming true boss encounters?

The events of the last couple of hundred years have indeed awoken the interest, ire, or just plain hunger of a fair few, larger than life individuals who want to come and play... or rather, slay! The world of Agon has been through the fires of celestial war and now stands on a precipice. Various interested parties may deem this an appropriate time to make a convincing bid for their view on the enslavement of everyone ever and what a pleasant existence you might have toiling under their tyrannical regime.

Some of these villains will be of the world boss variety, roaming around certain areas of Agon and stomping, mauling and generally finding various interesting ways with which to kill those unlucky enough to catch their eye. Others shall be taunting you from withing their various dungeons and lairs!

There are also some even more powerful, epic, and familiar faces from Agons' histories being designed to arrive some months after the release with the unlocking of the second, lower (or in two cases higher) levels of the dungeons!

Hello Darkfallers!

Apologies for the delay. We have an important announcement to make this Monday and we needed to turn our attention there.

Back to your questions now!

Will players still be able to mix and match armor pieces with encumbrance delimiting class (heavy/medium/light) or will players have to select a class (Destroyer, Magic User, etc...)? Essentially: Can I specialize my character to casting by simply wearing light armor and re-specialize to melee by donning heavy armor. Or will this be done by talking to an NPC who changes the characters class?

I believe you are referring to the armor system that has now evolved to the roles system. In the current Roles system it’s actually the other way around. You can pick a role for your character which can be done anywhere and anytime but it does have some limitations in order for people not to be switching roles all the time or while in combat and so on. Once a role is set, you can only wear armor that is allowed by your current role, heavy armor for warriors, medium for skirmishers and light for spell casters.

Here goes another one of your questions:

Will combat preparation time be reduced in any way?

Yes. Our new backpack/bank organization system makes the creation of 'ready bags' a total breeze. You can whip them up on the fly super-quickly so you don’t need to be forever fiddling in your bank.

In addition, the role system means that preparation is more tailored and specific. You no longer have to account for every scenario - you know what role you will be fulfilling and can plan accordingly.

Finally, we have made item management much neater and more streamlined with new stacking features, a dedicated weapon and item bar, and a reduced number of spell reagents.

Last one for today, have fun this weekend and stay tuned. You won't regret it...

Will Darkfall Unholy Wars be as IT involved as Darkfall 1? Meaning that the IT guys who knows best about macro's / scripts can win this game? Same with autoloot scripts and such, or will there be this time a friendly customer GUI for all?

We have created a level playing field for all players, regardless of their tech knowledge. Skills no longer benefit from macro-ing or scripting in the way they did in Darkfall 1.0 and the new GUI (which is AWESOME!) is much more fluid and less complicated. You will find that playing Darkfall Unholy Wars is much more like a fantasy combat game and much less like a flight sim.

Right after the announcement of Darkfall Unholy Wars, we have a number of your questions answered. Let's get to them:

What plans do you have to make mobs like the dragon or the devil PvP hotspots?

The primary incentive is of course the loot these high end monsters drop. All loot has been rationalized and redistributed so it will be worth the risk and time to take down these sorts of boss monsters. Also, the new player point system offers additional incentive in participating in taking down the Red Dragon, the Demon and the other top rank baddies. This combined with the fact that these spawns do not operate like other spawns makes them quite valuable.

Another one for you:

What is the idea behind momentum/crosshair wobble and how will they affect the game? Ex. Will an attack with increased momentum do extra damage? How much of a wobble will the crosshair wobble while running, walking, crouching, standing still?

Momentum and crosshair wobble are intended mainly adding an extra tactical element to Darkfall Unholy Wars. Shooting a bow or spell while sprinting should not be as easy as when standing still for example. So sprinting offers the maximum amount of penalty to attack accuracy, running, crouch walking offer a diminished penalty while standing still has no penalty. In the same way, momentum makes movement more realistic and encourages proper positioning as opposed to sprinting all time while swinging wildly trying to land a hit. Still, however, Darkfall: Unholy Wars is a real time manually aimed game so these effects are quite mild as we do not want to affect gameplay too much.

Will the land masses of Agon change at all in Darkfall Unholy Wars? Will there be new islands, changes in terrain features, new holding locations, etc..?

We have managed to rebuild almost every point of interest in Darkfall Unholy Wars. That includes among other things Environments, NPC Cities, Player Holdings, Dungeons, and Spawns.

When you first log in, you will notice that there is a huge difference in the Environments! They are all completely redesigned using a new system and the transition between a set with 4 environments for different times of the day is very smooth. Also each area has its own environment sets, so you will get a good sense of where you are in the world. Because of these changes and the dynamic lights, the nights look very impressive and they add an extra twist to the gameplay.

In Darkfall Unholy Wars you will find only 4 NPC Cities per Racial Area, three Faction Cities and a Capital. They have all been rebuilt from scratch, with the lore in mind so every city has its own unique feel and character with the Capital being the "Gem" of each Area.

We also separated the Cities into Districts, so if you want for example to find everything magic related, you will go the Magic District of the City you are in. Another big change is that every city has a main Square in the middle, with the bind stone, Bank and Councilor and all the roads leading to it so navigating them will be very easy.

There has also been a massive update to the Player Holdings. One of the biggest changes here is the fact that we removed the teleportation chambers from the Cities and the Hamlets. We felt that the advantage of instant teleport shouldn't be something that only clans had access, but every player in Darkfall Unholy Wars.

Additionally, city walls have a more important role since you cannot just walk into the city using a mountain slope and with the new role system and new skills jumping over them will be a lot trickier.

All the Cities have two or more entrances, so even if a city is inside a cave or at the top of a mountain and has a defensive advantage from the terrain, it will still need manpower to defend the gates.

All the Dungeons have new layouts, new monsters and bosses, and each of them has its own environment, combined with the dynamic lights.

Lastly there has been a change to the overall land mass as the world has been consolidated to bring points of interest closer together in order to benefit player versus player action. The world is still very big however as the majority of the areas that have been removed are water areas.

Will encumbrance in Darkfall Unholy Wars affect more than just damage outcome of spells / arrows / weapon swings and fizzles like it does in the original Darkfall? For example, will a warrior wearing "medium armor" move slightly faster or swing slightly faster than say a warrior wearing "heavy armor"?

Encumbrance has been totally removed from Darkfall Unholy Wars as a concept. In its place, new armors have been created in order to cooperate better with the new role / booster system.

Will there be spellfizzles, wall of forces, knockup spells, bunnyhopping spells in Darkfall Unholy Wars, or will they be removed or adjusted?

There will be an small chance to fail at casting a spell in Darkfall Unholy Wars. However, this chance will become greater if there is a "fizzle" debuff on you.

As for wall of forces kind of physics spells and abilities, we do feel that the new roles system has room for them, so yes they will be in. However only people of specific roles can use them and they will be more logical and balanced.

Bunnyhopping is a concept we are trying hard to remove from gameplay but at the same in players we trust to find ways of abusing their abilities. In that case we will take appropriate action if we think something is game breaking or does not agree with the spirit of Darkfall: Unholy Wars.

Will AV be implementing a marketing campaign to draw attention to Darkfall Unholy Wars with the intention of bringing in a large, fresh crop of new players, or is the focus more intimately aimed at keeping the current base on board?

Our objective is to target both. As Tasos stated in Darkfall Unholy Wars announcement “we made Unholy Wars for the people who love the original Darkfall, but also for those who were hesitant to try it, even for those who loved the concept but not the game itself.”

Hello, Darkfallers! We got a couple of answers for you today!

Will surges remain in Darkfall Unholy Wars?

The concept of surging is one that we like, but it does cause some issues when players use pre-surging. We have experimented with various scenarios when it comes to this so that we can keep them in Darkfall Unholy Wars, but make them more balanced and fair. Removing them altogether though is something that is still on the table. We will provide more information closer to launch.

Will Darkfall Unholy Wars operate some sort of Broker / Auction house to sell gear / mats on?

There is a market system that has been partly developed and we gave some details about it in a community update a while ago. Right now our schedule is really tight and it looks like markets will not be in at launch. However, we will evaluate adding the market system shortly after launch.

Hello, respected warriors of Darkfall! We can't leave you with no answers during the weekend, can we?

Judging by announced Darkfall Unholy Wars features, and the recent video interview, Darkfall Unholy Wars appears to be taking the direction of a 'PvP arena' game rather than a complete sandbox MMORPG. Could you clear up any confusion regarding this? Will Darkfall Unholy Wars no longer be the sandbox game the original developers set out to create, but instead just become a 'PvP arena' game?

That impression may have been given because we are trying to make the PvP aspect of Darkfall Unholy Wars and especially medium to large scale battles more accessible. Because of that some new features we have announced may have given you that impression. At the same time though, all the sandbox features are still there intact and quite a few have been improved. Sieging with all the politics involved for example is still a very important aspect of Darkfall Unholy Wars. The addition of the conquest system that blends villages to the whole territory control aspect of Darkfall Unholy Wars is also intended to improve the sandbox aspect of the game. There is also a completely new feature, that we are very excited about, that will allow clans to play the part of merceneries in sieges. In short, someone that considers the current Darkfall to be a sandbox game will find Unholy Wars to be even more so.

Will Darkfall Unholy Wars inherit / keep instant-cast spells such as rays?

Insta-cast offensive ray spells have been removed from Darkfall Unholy Wars mainly because they are highly scriptable and give an unfair advantage to players that use scripts.

It is not bad as a concept though and we might use it for other types of spells or abilities.