Darkfall Thoughts – PvE Combat and AI

How can I put this?  Lets try:

The PvE mob AI in Darkfall is the best I’ve ever seen in any MMO.  It’s on a par with relatively good FPS bots, and is the most fun I’ve ever had fighting a computer-controlled enemy.

Here’s a typical newbie fight in Darkfall:  I approach a ruined castle where I know there are some goblins.  I have a magic staff and a pair of knives, as well as some cloth armor (there’s a trade-off there I’ll discuss in a bit).  I swim around a wrecked ship and climb up on shore.  I do not see any goblins.  I hear goblins, soft scrabbling footfalls are coming from beyond a wall in front of me.  I creep through a broken gate and peer around the corner.  I see one goblin scout.  I fire a mana missile at him, which is VERY LOUD in the scheme of things.  He responds by shooting an arrow back at me and starting to weave back and forth, dodging a couple more of my mana missiles.  We duel like this for a bit, both dodging and getting in some hits.  My mana missiles hit significantly harder than his arrows, but my missiles are slow, and easily dodged, while his arrows are quick.

Suddenly I’m hit from behind.  A goblin fighter, attracted by the sound of the fighting, has joined the fight.  I rush the scout, intending to kill him with my knives before I’m too wounded to continue.  He sees me coming and turns and runs.  For a few seconds there’s a merry little chase through the castle courtyard as I sprint after him, desperately trying to avoid getting hit by the goblin fighter, who has by now switched to his bow and is plinking me with arrows.

When I catch the goblin scout, he turns and brings out his melee weapons and does a last-ditch melee stand.  Or at least, last-ditch until he changes his mind (again!), and takes off running (again!).  I switch back to my staff and try to mana missile him as he runs, but he’s juking back and forth like a jackrabbit running from a fox.  Finally I catch him in the splash damage of the mana missile and he goes down.  His body flops to the ground and a gravestone takes its place.

At this point, I’m wounded and there is still a goblin fighter in play, firing arrows at me.  I charge him, firing a mana missile as I approach.  He’s game and switches from bow to sword and shield while charging at me, and we go at it in direct melee.  We rapidly circle each other, each trying to get out from under the other’s aim while landing blows of our own.  My knives are quick but have a very short range – I’m basically hugging him as I fight – and often bounce off his shield.  His sword is slower and low damage.  I manage to parry a couple of attacks and prevent some damage, and my knives are taking their toll.

Then, we both get hit by a damage-over-time spell.  A goblin shaman has joined the fight, shooting spells from a position farther into the courtyard.  This is a time-to-go moment.  I go. I turn on sprint and quickly run away through the door and back onto the beach, while switching to my staff and throwing a self-heal out to boost my health a bit as spells and arrows fly past.  I make it out of their aggro range, and pause to eat and rest.  I’ll have to go back in to loot the goblin scout I killed.

My overriding impression of the AI in Darkfall is that mobs do not want to die.  They dodge, they juke, they run away, they yell for help, and other mobs are attracted by the combat.  If you let one go and switch to his buddy, the first one will come back and start shooting at you.  Pulling mobs is generally impossible, as the mob tether range is short and the bring-a-friend code is aggressive – it’s very rare that a mob will simply run to you, and much more likely that they will go get a friend or two and come back for you.  Mobs that are on the edge of the tether range will simply turn and run to cover if hit by arrows or spells.  If you try to back away as a mob is approaching, so that you can get in more bow shots or spells, the mob will dodge and either charge you, or back off a bit and switch to ranged combat again.

When I took down my first Skeleton Warrior, I literally jumped out of the chair and danced around. :)

I suspect that this AI can be more easily defeated by utilizing collision and groups of players to box in mobs and keep them from moving – I’ve managed to do this a few times myself by boxing a mob into a corner.  I’ve also seen videos of players swarming around golems and taking them down in this way.  Of course, that can be dealt with via pbaoe spells, but not all mobs will have that.  What I’d like to see is better teamwork on the mob side, with other mobs using aoe spells on groups of players to break them up – there is a lot of room for some really fun mechanics here.

Other notes:

• Mobs drop what they are actually carrying.  If a goblin fighter has a shield and a sword, he’ll drop a shield and a sword.  It’s not 100% (armor tends to drop one or two pieces instead of the whole set) but it’s very consistent and logical. Casters drop spell components (sometimes several stacks) and staves.  Skeletons drop bones.  When you skin mobs, you get body parts associated with that mob.  No random magical armor dropping from snakes in this game.
• All items have durability.  Durability goes down relatively rapidly – I’ve already broken a fishing pole, two sets of knives, and three staves – not including the equipment I’ve lost during PvP.  Weapon-type items lose durability more quickly than armor.  When I first started DF I was curious to know how they were going to do their money sinks, and now I know. :)  There are high-level skills that reduce but do not eliminate durability loss (this is hearsay, I do not have such a skill).  NPC merchants aren’t stupid either – a weapon with little remaining durability is worthless and cannot be sold.
• The sound system is exceptionally good.  There’s a problem with the default settings where all sounds appear to be close by – you can fix that by increasing the number of available 3D sounds in the audio options menu.  You’ll read a lot of complaints about the sounds and how basic and banal they are, but those people are completely missing the point – the sound system is not intended to be sexy, it is intended to be functional.  As in, you can tell the direction of an enemy by sound alone, and receive warning of impending ambush by the sound of the mob or player coming towards you.  You can also locate and avoid (or jump into) fights by sound alone.  You can identify many spells by their distinct sounds, as well as their graphics – you can sometimes even tell what is going to be cast by the aura around the caster.
• Healing is very limited and well-implemented.  You start with a zero-component self-heal that heals about 10-15 hit points in three ticks of 3-5 hit points each, but it has a 30-second cooldown and a heavy mana/stamina cost.  I currently have about 200 hit points, so every 30 seconds I can heal about 5-7% health – which isn’t going to stop anything from killing me, especially since it takes about ten seconds run its course.  There’s also a component-based heal that you can get at 25 Lesser Magic that does slightly better – the catch is that it is an aimed spell, so you can’t use it on yourself and if you miss and hit a mob, the mob gets healed instead (awesome!).  There are higher-level heals that are presumably more effective, but the same theme seems to apply – heals are HoTs, have cooldowns, and are resource-intensive.
• Parrying is difficult with a high ping.  Weapon parries at low levels do not block much damage.  Shield “parrying” is much more effective, and shields also provide resistance stats.  Shields work against arrows, but I’m not sure if they work against spells.  Holding your shield up costs stamina, so it’s usually best to try to time your shield or parry usage to the enemy attacks – which, of course, are not always predictable.
• The initial stealth skill is Crouch Walk.  I don’t know what else is available.  As your crouch-walk skill increases, it begins to suppress more and more of your footsteps as you move.  It appears to behave differently on different terrain – when you are sloshing through a swamp, it is almost impossible to hide your footsteps.
• Armor impacts casting.  The heavier the armor, the more detrimental effect it has on your casting speed and damage.  There is also an Armored Casting skill that counteracts this effect to some extent, but for now, if you want to hit reasonably hard with your spells, you are essentially limited to cloth armor or nothing.

Darkfall Release

I found out about Darkfall two weeks ago, when it was mentioned on Scott Jenning’s blog.  (Shows you how much I’ve been following mainstream gaming these days – apparently they’ve been in development for years.) Darkfall is a full PvP, full loot, MMO, rpg-fps hybrid.  No autoattack, no autoaim, no autostick, no mercy. :)  The game itself is fairly interesting, with some unique features, and some very good stuff planned – and more importantly, it more-or-less runs in WINE.

But I find myself far more interested in how the game is being released.

The Darkfall team is very small – just a few people.  Clearly they had intended on a very small initial release, and building from there like EVE did.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the internet did not cooperate.  A few weeks before release, the Darkfall team began selling pre-orders.  They sold quite a few.  Word of mouth about the game got around, and apparently there was a LOT of interest.  Come release day, the purchasing system was so overwhelmed that many people’s accounts got into bad states.  Their response was to shut down the purchasing system, and even now, almost two weeks later, there are still people stuck with broken accounts.  Once those problems were fixed (although past purchases are presumably still being dealt with), they faced a choice.

They have one server, that everyone on the team is clearly breaking their backs to keep it running, fix problems, ban cheaters, and all the things that you have to do to keep a production server running – including apparently, dealing with some serious after-effects of a problem at their hosting location.  Their choice is to a) let everyone in, take their money, and have the server suck because it is massively overloaded, or b) stick to their guns, absorb the flack from would-be customers, and do their best to make sure their in-game customers are happy and the server is running well, while carefully letting in more users and judging the effects of the new load before adding additional users.

The Darkfall team chose the second option.  Each day since a few days after the release, they’ve opened the store to allow the purchase a small number of new accounts (somewhere in the four-digit range).  When those copies have sold out, they close the store again – sometimes after only a few minutes.  Their official forums are filled with anguished, angry potential customers cursing, pleading, and begging to be allowed to buy the game.  Each day when the store has opened, the servers are literally overwhelmed with purchase requests.  I have participated in this zerg rush every day, just to get a feel a for it – I’m interested in playing, but I’m in no hurry.  I don’t think this is the best way to do a controlled release – there are far better options.  They also clearly made a mistake with their account-management company.

But that stuff is pretty much beside the point.  The temptation to sell as many copies as possible and make back all the money they’ve spent in development must be … overwhelming – especially since they have spent several million dollars in development.  But they chose instead to protect their in-game users, and keep the server running as smoothly as possible.  They’ve placed long-term survival and good gameplay over making money.  They are taking an enormous amount of flack for it, not just from the users but from the gaming press as well, and some of it well-deserved.  But they are staying with the plan.

They are in a bad situation, but their priorities are in the right place – keeping the server running, fixing critical bugs, and making sure the users that have bought the game can play and play well.  That shows a kind of determination and good decision-making ability that impresses me.