Avian Gamers Network

I think they answered questions the previous week, I'll link those when I get to them.
Dev Journal #22 text below
Dev Journal #22 on warcry

Dev Journal #23 text below
Dev Journal #23 on warcry

_________________
Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Darkfall: Dev Journal #22

Thanks to everyone for submitting their questions, I'm not sure if I expected this many.
I answered a couple which I thought were important to be answered immediately, and then picked some random ones. We'll go down this list of questions and answer as many of them as possible. We just have twelve today, I wanted to do more of them and balance out the topics a bit, but it wasn't possible due to time constraints. I'll continue on to next week with more.
Thanks to Shaar for categorizing these questions for us. In answering the specific question, I try to answer related questions as well. I may answer yours as part of someone else's. The questions posted are just there for reference, and that's why I won't add the name of the person asking. Here's the first batch:

Community: Will the game be downloadable, or do I have to wait for a CD to ship to the nearest EBgames?

Tasos Flambouras: : We strongly believe in digital distribution so Darkfall will definitely be downloadable with a number of options available for that. Of course there would also be a DVD option for those who prefer it.

Community: why has Darkfall had such a hard time securing a solid publisher and with the impending release of both age of Conan and Warhammer online aren't you concerned that the game will be unable to maintain a self sustaining profitable player base considering that the other games have giant budgets and giant advertising campaigns.

Tasos Flambouras: : In very simple terms, it's not so much as Darkfall having a hard time securing a publisher as it is that publishers have had a hard time securing Darkfall. I'll explain: We do have the capability to self-publish, so the competition to any publishing offer, aside from other offers, is our own plan for self-publication. In our self-publishing scheme we hire the same services that most publishers use so in effect "cutting out the middleman" is usually to our advantage, especially since as a newcomer in the gaming industry it's rare to get a fantastic deal. Furthermore, getting a publishing deal isn't crucial to us in regards to development, and we won't just jump at offers. We have the "luxury" to try to do what's best for the game in this context. That being said, we have been and still are in discussions with publishers who present a good and viable alternative to our self-publishing plan.
Giant budgets and giant advertising campaigns demand giant paydays. We definitely don't need to be a World of Warcraft killer to be successful, but the same may not be true about some of the other games in development. When faced with the question of budget allocation we decided that it's more important for us to first make as good a game as possible and then to market it on its merit. The opposite doesn't work in the long run, and quality would be compromised by taking some of the development resources and throwing them into marketing so we're betting everything on our strength. We couldn't compete with some of the large titles when it comes to marketing since it all comes down to dollars and cents, but we can still make one hell of a game.

Community: How common will mounts be? Will they be cheap so everyone can afford one or will they have a high price to give a bit "Risk Vs Reward" of using them. + Related questions

Tasos Flambouras: : Mounts won't be cheap so there will be the Risk vs. Reward aspect. However, they'll be affordable to the intermediate player, so we expect to have a lot of mounts in the game. They're fantastic for transportation and their use in combat is specialized. In many cases, fighting on foot is better and we believe there's a pretty good balance in place. Mounts are crafted into a figurine that you can carry on your person, so they're also lootable. When deployed, they're also killable. There are five different types with several color variations, also with the possibility of more mount types being introduced in the future.

Community: Can you teleport to each of your clans cities?

Tasos Flambouras: : You could by using runestones and tying them to your cities. They're expensive, they have limited uses and they're lootable. If someone were to loot your runestone, they could go to wherever you've tied it to.

Community: What happens if two ships crash together?

Tasos Flambouras: : You can't ram another ship for damage. You can block it though and fire into it, board it from your ship, take it over etc. There are many tactical reasons why you wouldn't want someone ramming your ship a certain way, especially if it presents a firing opportunity to their cannons or if they have a large boarding party waiting to jump onto yours. Ramming other ships or blocking them in will probably be used in naval battles where several ships are present.

Community: Clarification of the statement from Journal 20 that it matters where you get hit. Does this mean it matters in relation to knockback or that hit boxes have been added?

Tasos Flambouras: : It matters in relation to knockback which can mess up your aim, but also to damage you take when hit in front and the back. You take much more damage in the back. There were more hitboxes available but not anymore and this was done for practical reasons. Also as things stand now, there are no one-shot kills in Darkfall.

Community: Siege engines- Will they only do damage to structures or can they hit people too?

Tasos Flambouras: : They'll do damage to characters, mounts, other siege engines, and boats as well. They're used in city defense. We also want to see players setting up and positioning cannons and other siege engines for massive battles. Depending on the type of siege engine, new dimensions are added to battlefield tactics.

Community: With the more advanced AI of enemy monsters, how relentless will they be when it comes to pursuit? Will they follow us a set duration of time or distance, would they be smart enough to stop if we ran to a city? Also, along a similar line, if an enemy monster is outnumbered and out matched will it flee to find nearby allies?

Tasos Flambouras: : They'll follow you around but they won't follow you forever, they'll return to their area. They will call for help, and they'll also flee when the odds are stacked up against them or if they're damaged. The AI constantly assess the situation and will react accordingly but not in a consistently predictable manner. This is something I have personally never enjoyed in other MMOs that I've played, but it's fun fighting AI in Darkfall.

Community: Beta ETA (we all understand possible setbacks that's nature of the industry but a 1 month 2 yrs or something would be great)

Tasos Flambouras: : Previous estimates on beta were honest educated estimates based on facts at the time. Circumstances have a way of changing, so we don't want to try to estimate again when so many things are in flux. The only thing certain is that we expect everything to come together one way or another within a few months so that our launch can be within the year. When we decide whether to go with a publisher or to self publish we will announce a beta date.

Community: How much will light armor exactly hamper my spell casting? Will it be so enormous that robes are a must for every spell caster and that leather is already a big no-no?

Tasos Flambouras: : If you're a serious spell caster, you'll probably want to be in robes since wearing armor to a varying degree will add penalties to your spell casting time and your spell casting ability.

Community: Will there be pole arms long enough to create a phalanx type formation?

Tasos Flambouras: : There are some polearms which are pretty long, and reach matters so I suppose you could simulate this if you can maintain discipline in your ranks.

Community: If a player of a friendly race attacks you and in defending yourself you have to kill him, do you take an alignment hit?

Tasos Flambouras: : I'm assuming in this answer that everyone involved is of the same alignment. When attacked you'll get some time to attack and kill your attacker without the penalty. If you're with friends and they help you, they won't take the hit. If a bystander sees you getting attacked and kills the attacker, he won't get the hit. You could say that the attacker "goes gray" to everyone of a positive alignment. In order to negate this effect in accidents we've removed it from clanmates and people in the same group. So if you accidentally swing into your clanmate or someone in your group, you won't be open game to everyone. As you can probably deduce from this, you can spar freely with clanmates or with people that you're grouped up with because there's no alignment penalty.

_________________
Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

Darkfall: Dev Journal #23

Continuing last week's QA, here are 29 questions answered. I'm trying to answer everything and I'm not cherry picking as some people suggested last week. I'm just going down a list of questions. There are a lot of questions which are very poorly worded, difficult to understand their meaning and some which are just totally foreign to the Darkfall spirit and are inspired by other MMOs which we also try to answer in a Darkfall context.
Next journal ETA is unknown due to a heavy workload I need to focus on, and I hope you can appreciate that I didn't break this week's up into 2 installments.

Fan Question: Will the crafting system works with blueprints?

Tasos Flambouras: No, you learn your recipes as you raise your trade skills. It's different with enchantment, and advanced crafting. In crafting you have a failure rate based on your skill level and when you fail you'll burn crafting components. The rarer the component, the lower the chance you'll lose it.

Fan Question: What will the construction system be like? Also, will players be able to create a city in mountains or in underground locations?

Tasos Flambouras: I'm not going to directly answer this question because we intend to show you at some point how the construction system works. Describing it here is not descriptive enough. We've said before that "building anywhere" is relative. In Darkfall you can't build in any location you want, but this provides with unique clan cities built in awesome locations. So your clan city can be built on top of a glacier, have a waterfall hiding its entrance, be built on several levels on the side and in caverns inside a mountain, have secret underwater entrances, on a remote island...that kind of thing. These clan city features are not just about aesthetics, like where you ask about customizations, there is functionality in their layout. Darkfall's clan cities are extremely impressive and no two will be the same. Furthermore their location is strategic as far as geography and proximity to limited resources, making them points of conflict.

Fan Question: If there are any regular clanstones off of the main continent, what kind of NPCs will be available?

Tasos Flambouras: Every clanstone is associated with a race, even in the subcontinents.

Fan Question: Does the main continent have chaostones throughout (i assume that silvertown has one) or does it only have regular (player controllable)clan stones?

Tasos Flambouras: There are a few chaos stones in the neutral areas around the middle of the main continent.

Fan Question: How long does it take a build city from a let's say guild with ~80 working hour a day (with sufficient funds given)? How long does it take to tear down a city from group of ~80 who have already conquered the city?

Tasos Flambouras: I hate to estimate but let's say you could fully build up a city if you're working hard at it in about a month. That estimate could be way off at launch, but at least you know that it doesn't take three days or a year. Then you can break down the city a building a day or a building section (for fortifications) a day. Of course it's not efficient to do that when you could keep the city you conquered.

Fan Question: How much is player involved in crafting? Is it the collect items and automatic transform when you have enough skill, is it something with success %, is it something completely different?

Tasos Flambouras: Crafting is pretty involved...you have to collect, or trade to acquire the raw materials, then the crafting of complex items is broken down into crafting sessions and you have to craft the building blocks first. There's a crafting time of a few seconds to several minutes. You have a success probability based on your skill, and the quality of the finished item will also vary from crafter to crafter. There are different considerations in enchantment and advanced crafting as well, which we'll leave for another time.

Fan Question: Can a single character max out/top end multiple fields in crafting. IE My dwarf is an armor smith, weapon smith and enchanter maxed.

Tasos Flambouras: You can max out multiple crafting skills assuming you're using them a lot, but it will take a long time to achieve.

Fan Question: Will farming provide a challenge or will it just be a grind fest?

Tasos Flambouras: Farms are mostly located inside and around clan cities. Farming is a harvesting and logistical exercise. You also have to control who is using your farm. You can deplete a farm's resources but they'll grow back, so careful management is required for maximum yield.

Fan Question: Can items be recycled (turned into gold or resources)?

Tasos Flambouras: They can be recycled by selling to a vendor or another player, by crafters modifying them, and there was a salvage skill which is not active at the moment for economy balancing reasons. We may or may not reintroduce it.

Fan Question: Will there be any way to visually detail the items you craft? i.e. If my clan had a logo or emblem would i be able to visually put it on my crafted items

Tasos Flambouras: No you cannot and this is done for practical reasons. The crafted item however has the name of the crafter on it.

Fan Question: What are the requirements to start a clan? i.e. A minimum number of players, charter fee like WoW or a combination of different things?

Tasos Flambouras: There's a small charter fee.

Fan Question: Will ARAC and/or negatively aligned clans be able to hire guards/NPCs? Will ARAC clans only be able to bind to Chaos stones? Will Alfar be able to join clans of other races?

Tasos Flambouras: We're working through different options here trying to make it less annoying for the players who just go into the game and choose a race without knowing the details about the clan restrictions, and then going to their clan and finding out they messed up. It won't be optimal, and a single race clan will have an advantage within its area, but we're making an effort to minimize the pain for ARAC clans. At the same time we're trying to maintain the racial aspect of the game as much as possible. NPC's are an issue and we have several ways of addressing this which will be tested in the beta.

Fan Question: Camera mode. Is it adjustable (changing back and forth between 1st and 3rd), is it forced and can we roll it around if not in combat (aka. with cumbersome system to prevent anti-sneaking tool)?

Tasos Flambouras: You can't see your character's face in Quake unless there's a mirror surface or your character gets killed. In Darkfall you can see it when on a mount, or on a ship, or when you're on your back incapacitated. We're considering a vanity setting where you can look at how pretty your character is without compromising the gameplay.

Fan Question: What are the spell casting mechanics going to be like? Similar to wow? Different casting times for different spells or more like oblivion having them all cast instantly but dig much deeper into your mana pools?

Tasos Flambouras: You have different casting times for different spells depending on the spell. Also different mana usage, reagent burn, and recast time depending on the spell.

Fan Question: Can magic spells *fail* to cast due to skill level?

Tasos Flambouras: Yes they can. It's not to the point of being annoying but it will happen, especially in the first few times you use the spell.

Fan Question: Bardic Spells - Are they in the game, if so what do they do? Can you explain what a "Bard" is like in Darkfall? Instruments required? What kind of instruments do you have? Can you actually play these instruments, or is it the same tune and you simply press a "play" button?

Tasos Flambouras: No bardic spells.


Fan Question: What are the current schools of magic? Anything changed inside those 12 known ones or are you willing to reveal more schools?

Tasos Flambouras: There were 12 schools that were upped to 13 schools which got cut down to 10. We may reintroduce the three which were cut (Ritual, Divine, and Wild magic). They were cut because they were redundant the way the other schools worked. The schools that are in at the moment are: Lesser-Greater - Fire - Water - Earth - Air - Witchcraft - Necromancy - Spell Chanting - and Arcane magic.

Fan Question: Is there mass disease rituals and can those diseases spread. How large is the scale of those mentioned effects, basically what´s the biggest aoe within your skill system?

Tasos Flambouras: There are disease spells but not area of effect, rather individual. They are not contagious. The largest area of effect spell we have is pretty impressive but I can't say yet how impressive.

Fan Question: Since you have to aim spells do they have a max range and/or an arch system like arrows or do they just fly for 'x' amount of time. Given your proposed weather system will this effect bolt style spells?

Tasos Flambouras: There's a maximum range, and there are spells which arch as well. The weather system doesn't affect bolts.

Fan Question: What's the largest successful conflict occurrence that testers have had without latency/lag issues?

Tasos Flambouras: I can't say what the largest was but we simulate more than a hundred without problems. Keep in mind that this is before optimizations.

Fan Question: How's the situation with prestige classes? Are you going to implement them after release, or are they dropped out completely?

Tasos Flambouras: No, we're putting them on the backburner and prioritizing them for after release. It's an option which would be available a bit later in the evolution of a character anyway so we don't think anyone's going to miss this feature by the time it's implemented.

Fan Question: How many crafting skills are intended for release? (rough estimate? more than 10, less? more than 20?)

Tasos Flambouras: More than twenty.

Fan Question: Is there a possibility of having multiple skill levels to perform a single spell?

Tasos Flambouras: Spells go up in power based on skill level. Take a fireball for instance; there are a few points in a character's skill progression where the spell gets a power boost until it maxes out. This boost isn't linear. The difference between a 99 skill and a 100 skill fireball for example is really large. You get one really powerful fireball at 100 and then your skill drops to 99 again and you have to get it back up to fire it again.
Another answer to what this question may be asking is that there are skill tree-like prerequisites for casting certain spells. So you need one before you can start casting the other.

Fan Question: Can we stack spells before releasing them? like have a fireball, ice shard and lightning bolt charged at the same time before releasing them all together like a torrent of magic...?!

Tasos Flambouras: No we can't

Fan Question: Will there be alignment hits for attacking but not killing a character of the same race?

Tasos Flambouras: As things stand right now, there is none. The attacker however goes gray to everyone of a positive alignment and can be killed without a penalty.

_________________
Dalaran: Arindel - Frost Mage (Mining/Alchemy)
Dalaran: Roran - Paladin (Weaponsmith/Blacksmith)
Dalaran: Baine - Rogue

The building cities behind waterfalls and other landscapes sounds impressive.
If Avian had a presence, you'd be obligated to build a city at some giant bird's nest. There has to be one because no fantasy world is complete without an enormous version of a hawk. Little known fact.