Wulfyn

Introduction

The combat system for Darkfall promises to be a mixture of traditional MMORPG styles with an element of FPS that should add an extra element of player skill back into the equation.

Combat Features


The gritty bit

Darkfall has been designed with the phrase "accountable freedom" in mind. Thus you are free to attack anyone anywhere, but you will have to face the repercussions of your actions. This will make the game very PvP (Player vs Player) focused as there are no safe zones. However if you start killing (read: murdering) people in towns then the NPC guards will take steps to intervene, and you could well find yourself being attacked on sight if you step foot back in that city again.

There are a number of other measures that step up the level of accountability. Most prominant is full loot drops combined with no item binding. This means that if you are killed whilst wielding your favourite magic sword you do not get to keep it when you respawn (unless of course your side wins and a friend is kind enough to pick it up and get it back to you). This means that there are real dangers to PvP. The bonus is that this is also applied to NPCs in PvE (Player vs Environment) so that if you kill an enemy that held you off for a long time due to his strong magical armour then he drops this armour which you can loot.

For more info about the repercussions of death check out this link:
Oh noes it all went wrong!


Button bashing

Actual combat (which includes spellcasting, ranged combat and melee combat) is placed equally within the bounds of the player and the character. Exact details of how this will play are not forthcoming, and even so I imagine it is hard to describe this in a way that is salient to evrybody. However the basics are that magic/ranged combat will be a FPS affair with an aiming reticule of sorts. Melee combat will be a 3rd person view so you can see where your sword is swinging. This is an important point as the Darkfall collision system does not distinguish friend from foe. Be careful with that fireball!

Some combat screenshots

All of this should allow a level of intensity of combat more akin to BF2 or Counterstrike. This is good news for us as it will mean that the game is taken out of the hands of pure powergamers who just take the best combos all day long, and firmly towards us, with our history of rapid on-the-fly tactics and pre-planned strategies.

I did manage to find a link to a PvP Video (13.9Mb)


Off yer knees!

Another exciting feature of combat will be the ability to get off your two pegs and fight using other things. Mounted combat is a definite for the game, and has raised much praise from the community. Mahrim, a beast people, lack a racial mount but have a special mode where they can run like a mount. So for any aspiring Knights of the Realm you can go to war in a fully barded warhorse.

For me however the most exciting prospect is fleet engagements. There will be ships in Darkfall, armed with cannon, so you can take to the high seas. Be ye pirate or privateer, the options are widespread.


Summary

Hopefully this will have provided a good idea of what combat in Darkfall will be like. It sounds pretty good to me, so I hope that not only do things not get dropped for release but also that it plays well and bug free. If there are any more questions do check out the official Darkfall Combat FAQ. If that does not help then post below with questions, and hopefully we'll be able to continue finding out what is on offer.


Next week we'll be looking at the different races in the game, and hopefully this will allow us to start formulating ideas of what we would like to play.

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