Karkianman101

Depending on how flexible the town/fort constructor is, we could have NPC's and a 6-race group. Have a central area without any NPC's, a kind of commons, that you get to through 1 of 3 different tunnels, depending on your alignment. The tunnels themselves are the only way in from the outside, and are all guarded by faction specific NPC's.

Turbo

I guess the NPC's will be the vendors in the towns too. Cool idea with the tunnels, maybe expanding it a little more make you drawing the center and put vendors out at the ends so you can get them before you enter the center.

Hopefully we can implement some of the ideas we have.

__________________

Wulfyn

Choosing a race is going to be the most important thing we do, because it really sets the tempo for how we are going to be set up. The one thing I learnt from Eve was that groups with mixed motivations are VERY hard to make work. In my leadership with TEGL it was a constant theme that the industrialists would be hampered by war, but the PvP'rs would be bored without it. It's not impossible, but it is hard.


With darkfall the devs are talking about limiting an account to just one player race (possibly even just one character). This will stop a human guild from using an Ork alt to scout for them. Additionally whereas PCs can interact freely with other PCs, NPCs will not. A Human town guard will attak any Orc on sight, and there is seemingly nothing that can change that. Thus if we wanted to run a city, and by that I mean have our guild conquer a neutral or enemy city to use for our base, then we will need to have a strong team. If we split our racial base then we may end up being too diluted to achieve any of our goals.


So it's going to be tough to make a good decision.

__________________

Karkianman101

Or we could have three different TG guilds that are all allied. We could have a camp of Alfar that we would call in for help on the battlefield and territory police-work, mahirim/orcs to provide our main battlefield support and be the initial conquerors of territory, then have the dwarves, elves, and humans mainly be involved in economic issues.

Wulfyn

We could, but as I said we would be diluting our player pool. If we have a load of WoW guys join in or something and have 100 players then this might be feasible, but 20 players doesn't spread over 3 guilds too well.


Does anyone know if Humans will ally with Mahrim? I thought I read somewhere that this was a possible matchup. If so it could please both player pools.

__________________

Vyko

I believe Humans and Mahirim are enemies, unfortunately. Splintered towns within the same guild sounds like a cool idea, but it'd be very hard to come to the aid of anyone in the guild outside your faction without losing rep, since there's a good chance the aid would probably the same faction as the attacker.

Also, unless I'm missing something, doesn't the tunnel idea let anyone who wants access to our town in? An enemy clan would just have to go to their respective entrances for access to the center

It's definitely a bit of a crappy situation when it comes to picking a faction to satisfy everyone though

Karkianman101

The tunnel idea is no different from a normal town. I'm thinking that we're probably just as likely to be enemies of like-raced guilds as non-like-raced guilds. The sense of competition ("you do injustice to the Mahirim race!") would balance with the natural faction differences.

SmokingTarpan

While the tunnel idea is cool, I agree with Wulfyn that it's not very feasible to have a mix of non-aligned races in the long run. I haven't seen that the mahirim are outright enemies of the humans, but I don't hold much hope that they'll get along too well. It all comes down to the NPCs, and whether they'll interact with the races we choose.

I'd love to see us be able to do a combination of human/dwarf/mahirim, but I don't think it's possible. Aside from how the races look and all, another thing to consider is that, even though it's a classless game, most races are specialized toward one type of activity or play type. Sure, you can learn whatever you want and play how you will, but some groups are going to be better at one thing over another. The mahirim and orks seem a very physical, non-diverse set of races to me (good for conquest, but not so in other areas), which is not necessarily how I like to play.

Oh, and they're ugly. :P

__________________

[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

SmokingTarpan

Brought up our concerns on the Darkfall board. Here's the thread:

http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=27051

So far it doesn't bode well for multi-faction diversity.

__________________

[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

Karkianman101

They really don't seem to be good at answering your question directly... and I haven't seen any detailed information such as:

What are the gradients of racial relations. Is it just Friend and Foe, or is there a Neutral catagory, and how does it differ from friend?
What are the specific love/hate relationships for each race?
What are the specific perks/skills for each race?

Those things all affect what races should be allowed in a clan.

SmokingTarpan

One of the posters on there directed me this way:

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/671/671809p1.html

To quote the part that seems most relevant to our discussion:

"Racial antipathies and sympathies
The consequences for killing players or NPCs of friendly races are similar to those for killing members of your own race, but slightly less severe. Humans, elves and dwarves are on friendly terms with each other, while orks and mahirim respect each other to the extent that interracial murder is frowned upon. The alfar despise all other races with such intensity that killing a member of them is considered a noble act of mercy.

It should be mentioned that sinking to a negative alignment among your own race doesn't improve your standing with its traditional enemies. An orkish NPC will always attack a mirdain elf, and an orkish player will always be rewarded for killing a mirdain, no matter what the elf's alignment is. It is impossible for an orkish player to improve his or her standing among the mirdain, and vice versa."

So it seems that regardless of what you do with your character alignment-wise, NPCs will still hate their factions natural enemies. Reading elsewhere, there seems to be some towns and such that are basically lawless and will interact with anyone, but they won't be controlled by players.

__________________

[squadl]
"I am the prettiest african-american, vietnamese..cong..person." -SugarNCamo

Wulfyn

Nice find Tarpan!

So those 3 factions seem pretty set, which is a bit of a shame cos it would have been nice for there to have been a touch of overlap. What I'm going to try and do is better nail down what each race's strengths and prestiges are likely to be. For example I agree with many here that playing Orks could be more fun than playing humans in the sense it is a bit different. On the other hand I'm looking forward to the sailing aspect of the game so I'm a touch hesitant to go with Orks over humans definitely as... well I'm not wholly convinced the Ork ships will be much to talk of! (although that is just speculation on my part).

That said I'd rather be in the TG group with my 2nd choice race than in a 2nd choice guild with my 1st choice race.

__________________

Turbo

What he said. Ill play any race, I am just looking to be stealthy/sniper type character.

__________________

Vulcan

I think that system can lead to a rather uneven mechanic. DAoC had the same rules and in an extreme manner. Different factions couldn't even communicate. What ended up happening is one faction on a server was always weak, i could see this happening with the alfar. Dunno how that's gonna turn out but deciding right from character creation which side you are on is gonna be a real bear for gameplay.

__________________

Wulfyn

well hopefully we'll make the beta team and then we can get a better feel for the game.

__________________