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Why pre-trammel UO failed, and the similarities to DF
It's apparent that part 6 of Noobs really clarifies how 'exactly' the ruleset of DF will be the same as UO was before Trammel. Her comments about going rogue (grey in UO).
The fact is, that UO was dying pretty rapidly up until they announced Trammel. Let me give you some reasons why players quit under this kind of system.
1. Exploits - Dying to players who exploit in other games is annoying.. dying to exploiters and losing all your stuff will make you completely stop playing until the exploit is fixed. How fast do 'exploits' spread? Once someone learns it, they will pass it onto their guild and friends. How fast do most games take to fix an exploit? A few weeks to acknowledge it, another 2 weeks to fix it? UO had a bunch of real exploits (spamming chat to get people to lag) and they also had 'tricks'. Just like in UO.. players will learn how to get you to go rogue/grey so they can get you killed. Honest players will just stop playing, everyone else will learn to use the exploit.
2. Lag/Crashes - Same as above. If you have lag spikes at all, will you really play that day? In other games, death isn't that big of a deal, so you don't mind getting killed a few extra times because your connection is bad.
3. Brit graveyard - To those that didn't play UO, I'll explain this 
Brit graveyard was typically the first area where new players would 'wander' outside of town. It was right outside of the biggest town, and it had easy monsters to kill. Because of this, it was often the place where Murderers hung out. In UO, new players were often essentially trapped in town. Yes, if you knew people before you started playing, they could help you.. but you basically had to know them BEFORE you started playing. Someone who just bought the box, logged in and started playing, probably spent their first month rarely getting out of town. This is the exact reason UO introduced Trammel. Players weren't renewing after their free month, and they were citing 'ganking' as the reason. The same thing will happen in Darkfall. Anti-social players will camp the area where new players first step into the 'world' and gank them.
4. Don't come late to the party - This kind of goes with #3. But basically what happens is if you are a month or two late starting the game, you will be getting ganked all the time by players that are more powerful than you and they will block your progress. The first players who got through 'brit graveyard' were free to advance their skills pretty freely, but anyone who started late, always had more powerful characters waiting for them. This was the reason that some players 'loved' old UO.. because they were out there early. I was lucky when I played UO, i started at launch. But I had enough friends who started late and I 'experienced' what they did. New players won't renew
5. Class/skill balance - Class balance is extremely hard to do. Class balance in PvP is almost impossible. How much fun is it going to be to play if you aren't the OP class? If because of skill/class balance you are losing your gear all the time. In every game, players cry about class balance.. in a game where it means you lose your gear..they will do more than cry, they will quit, or they will reroll to the OP class.
6. Bring your friends - full-loss death means that players will group up and wander in bands. This sounds cool in theory, but what happens if you log in and you don't have many friends on? And again, what about new players?
UO pre-trammel showed exactly what is going to happen with DF.
1. New players won't last the first month
2. Exploits will be rampent and spread quickly. 'tricking' players into going grey will be considered a tactic. Players who are successful aren't the ones who use their skills the best, they will be the ones who learn to game the game.
3. The Flavor-of-the-month class will be the only one played. UO had a phase (about 6 months) where everyone was a mage who carried a polearm.
4. Gear grinding - You'll have to have many sets of gear stored, or else when you die with your group, you will get left behind as you try to get more gear.
There is a reason why UO made Trammel, they were losing a ton of players because of the ruleset.
If you have a pre-built guild and you plan on starting on day 1 things will seem fine for a few weeks... but the UO ruleset just is not viable for a longterm game
Comments
This is a big possibility with DF, that is true. But since I am not in the beta I don't know if Aventurine have thought about these things or not.
Yes it sounds very fun, But i agree with you. OP.
All of the things that you have listed are true of every game that has non consensual pvp in it, some of them are very popular. Go through your list and compare it to a WoW pvp server, all of it applys. The only exception is the full loot and if gear is easy to get that won't be a problem. I assume you play mmorpgs on pve servers.
These are some of my concerns as well. However they have been my concerns before playing any PvP based game prior to launch and some have been very successful games. Only time will tell at this point so saying the game will fail because of this is a bit premature.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
Can you document that postulate?? I have always been under the impression that UO did fine in the T2A era... And I was playing back then... (In fact I think you would have trouble proving it since they didn't show the server population numbers back then.. )
Can you document that postulate?? I have always been under the impression that UO did fine in the T2A era... And I was playing back then... (In fact I think you would have trouble proving it since they didn't show the server population numbers back then.. )
I do remember Fel died and alot of my friends quit UO when Trammel came. I still had a blast and probably most fun at the factionwars on my server a while later. Closed my account for good when Aos hit with blessed and insured items.
Trammel killed my favourit MMO, thats for sure. I didn`t even try EQ, AC or Shadowbane. Why should I when UO was for me the best game ever.
you can look at mmochart.org or whatever that site is. Note that I said that it started increasing when trammel was 'announced'. Subscription were dropping, and then turned around about 6 months before the actual release of trammel. Regarding the t2a expansion, every game gets a bump around an expansion, but it was short lived. The devs at the time stated that the reason for trammel was the overwhelming number of people who said 'getting ganked is not fun' when they cancelled.
And about this being true of any FFA game.. mostly true.. but again, Darkfall is a big budget game.. there has not been a big budget game (10+ million) that has survived long as a FFA game.
hopefully the guards in the starter cotys will help the game will be bit diffrent form uo so hopwfulyl they thought about these problems
I quit after AOS also. but that doesn't change the fact that for the year or two before that, Felucca was mostly empty. The devs had to put a lot of effort into changing Felucca to get players back ( Factions, then later powerscrolls). Even with a lot of extra rewards, Felucca was still empty. The ruleset does not work.
hopefully the guards in the starter cotys will help the game will be bit diffrent form uo so hopwfulyl they thought about these problems
There will always be the area 'just past' the guards. That is what Brit graveyard was. At some point, a new player will have to leave the guard zone.. and it will be at that area where the real jerks will congregate.
Seeing as there are too many unknown variables concerning the way the ffa pvp will be handled, and the conditions, it's a bit too early, imo, to say DF will be a replicate of pre-trammel UO and will fail because of it. I see the ffa full loot pvp turning away most casual players, but if they execute everything in a fair enough manner, they can still pull in quite a good number of players for a niche game. I think, if after 1 year, if DF still has 100k + players, it should be considered a good success. It's never going to get WoW numbers, obviously, but I can easily see them achieving Eve type numbers after some time, if they can make everything fit, and work well.
I was going by Noobs description in #6. The whole 'rogue/grey' thing she described is how UO worked, and it caused a lot of problems because people 'gamed' the system and learned ways to make non-criminals turn criminal.
While you say it is too early to tell, the fact is that everything they have released is EXACTLY like pre-trammel UO.
No way 100,000
If similar exploits that were in UO are going to be in DF is yet to be seen. As for the 100k remark: I stated that if they released successfully, and implemented an open pvp system that isn't easily exploitable, then a year after release, 100k subscribers should be considered a success. Pre-tram UO had over 100k subscribers.. Eve has near 200-250k. 100k isn't astronomical, but for a niche title, is quite a bit. Everything is pretty much opinion, and we'll all be able to see how everything plays out when it releases. I'm not saying DF is going to be a success.. I have my own doubts about the game myself, but as they are keeping everything underwraps for the most part, it's too early (imo) to make blanket statements on how successfull (or disastorous) it will be.
UO was always packed full of people pre-trammel. AoS is what killed UO for most people. Half of my guild quit when trammel was introduced.
agreed, but UO was the only game back then. Pre-trammel was pre-EQ (mostly). It was the only game, players didn't have a choice. The whole idea of a MMO was amazing back then. I remember going to brit bank and being amazing thinking that all those 'people' were being controlled by real people.
All of the things I listed are things that ARE going to happen. Exploits (tricking players into going grey), ganking new players at low level areas, class/skill imbalances etc.
we'll see.. Jan 22nd will be a fun day... just to see things shake out
UO pre-trammel showed exactly what is going to happen with DF.
1. New players won't last the first month
2. Exploits will be rampent and spread quickly. 'tricking' players into going grey will be considered a tactic. Players who are successful aren't the ones who use their skills the best, they will be the ones who learn to game the game.
3. The Flavor-of-the-month class will be the only one played. UO had a phase (about 6 months) where everyone was a mage who carried a polearm.
4. Gear grinding - You'll have to have many sets of gear stored, or else when you die with your group, you will get left behind as you try to get more gear.
There is a reason why UO made Trammel, they were losing a ton of players because of the ruleset.
If you have a pre-built guild and you plan on starting on day 1 things will seem fine for a few weeks... but the UO ruleset just is not viable for a longterm game
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This is totally crap your ill informed and based facts on a 11year old game, you have absolutely no clue what so ever how Darkfall is.
Again some troll try place Darkfall in negative light bah:(
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Even before Trammel, UO's subscriptions were on the rise, and when Trammel came, we had around 250,000 players and it was still going up.. I admit, the game was still good.. But then they made AGE OF SHADOWS! They brought insurance into play, so you couldn't lose your items, just your money, they took away the sandbox elements of the game and itemized it and now there is 3 more rulesets like Trammel..
But their numbers declined and now there is easily around 90,000+ subscribers.. So what happened??
Well, the game is RAN by scripters, gold farmers, hackers, dupers, and more, EA won't do anything about it, and the players cannot fight them... And it is like 30 million to get a decent gear to PvP with if you want to compete and everyone is always looking for the next best set of skills to PvP with when they edit the skills, there is always a skill that over-comes the rest.. People farm for gear now more than ever before..
I do not wish for Darkfall to head in this direction..
It sounds like Darkfall is not for you though.. Planetside sounds like it is for you..
I played UO from launch until EQ was released. I left because there was nothing else to do but kill each other.
Darkfall may very well fail, but it wont be because it's too hardcore.
I was one os the UO players that quit because of the pvp ganking, and came back after the implementation of Trammel. My skill level was too low for my guildies to allow me to tag along on major hunts so I would hunt elsewhere to increase my skills. The thing about building up your skills in UO is you never wanted to bring your best gear in fear of losing it.
Then I would find a good grinding spot and doing pretty good, something that gives you a good challenge, but you won't die from. Then suddenly another player runs by you followed by 5 MOB's and go into stealth. Now all the MOBs are on you. So you try to run getting smashed along the way. You make it out the cave with a sliver of health only to find the same player who trained the Mobs on you to deliver the killing blow. 
This would happen everywhere I went and every time I attempted it. I easily felt like this was a waist of my time.
I am all for a PvP game, but there has to be certain restrictions. Player Killers, Ganking, Training, Ninja looting, MOB stealing, Griefing: these are all negative gaming terms and are originally from UO.
Please advise him on what is crap about what he posted. He used a game that pretty much is identical to DF. Please remove the foot from your mouth the next time you post. He is pretty much head-on about what could happen in DF. You must be one of those people who is going to resort to pling and ganking newbs for satisfaction. Next time read up on opinons, might help you.
This is also the exact same ruleset that Lineage II uses. While the game may be an Asian grindfest it was the #1 game for a short while before WoW released. Before that the #1 game was lineage I, another game that used this exact 1 hit flagging system. The decline of both of these games has to do more with the WoW era of MMO gaming and nothing to do with the rulesets they used. These two games use this same PvP ruleset minus the full loot and were staggeringly popular for years before they were superceded by the casual playstyle of the modern MMO gamer. Lineage II still has close to a million paying subscribers as we speak so can hardly be called a dead game. Also in resent expansions they have added elements to the game to lessen the grind so subscriptions are on the rise again but they haven't changed the PvP ruleset since day one.
(Edit: After some thought I thought it would be prudent to point out that I'm not comparing DF to L2 in any way except for the PvP rulesets they use. L2 is a class based Asian grindfest and is in no way like DF as a game. Just the PvP aspects are similar minus the full loot.)
How exactly the PvP ruleset will work really depends on how well the players themselves police the game world. As you said there will be areas where "jerks" will hang out to get easy kills. These areas will also be well known by the anti-PK guilds and will be policed accordingly. There will be PKers of that I have no doubt. How they will effect the game over the long term is still yet to be seen and is impossible to predict until we see exactly how the PvP ruleset is implemented and how well players police the hot spots. As I said before only time will tell and saying the game will fail because of this is premature at best.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
}
We already know that UO had ganking and griefing but World of Warcraft does too, are you aware of that? You have the level 80's on the WoW PvP servers going around and killing lower levels, over and over again, and there is nothing they can do about it, that is what griefing is.. You get griefed in WoW just as much as UO back then, it sounds like Darkfall is going to find ways around this...
A lot will depend if 'evil' actions have consequences.
Being red did not mean that much in UO when you could macro your way back.
We already know that UO had ganking and griefing but World of Warcraft does too, are you aware of that? You have the level 80's on the WoW PvP servers going around and killing lower levels, over and over again, and there is nothing they can do about it, that is what griefing is.. You get griefed in WoW just as much as UO back then, it sounds like Darkfall is going to find ways around this...
Griefing in WoW and Griefing in UO were totally different.
In UO you lost everything in WoW the only time griefing got annoying is when you got owned on escort quests.
It was simple if you played WoW on a pvp server you didn't run escort missions.
When I first started playing WoW and got ganked all I did was laugh.
It took me less then two minutes to get back to my body with no durability hit. I didnt need to buy new gear, I have virtually no downtime. I was like "Ok, so when you kill me I lose nothing? LOL!"
WoW griefing was nothing compared to UO.
PLaying: EvE, Ryzom
Waiting For: Earthrise, Perpetuum
But you are losing something, your time. This is exactly the same thing that you lose in a ffa full loot game.