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 Marketing blurb: ”The Devs” posted:Das Tal is a fast-paced Sandbox MMORPG that focuses on player interaction. Full Loot and Open PvP create a game of risk vs. reward where you weigh up your options before engaging others. PvP is never restricted but cooperation is always rewarded. Each world is unique in its feature set and geography - and you pick those features! Time-boxed servers create winners and losers and allow you to regularly start anew. A class-less character system allows you to shape your character to fit your playstyle. You fight for resources to craft your equipment and construct your settlement. PvP combat is 100 percent skill-based, common and quick to be found. Both small-scale raids and large-scale sieges are available for all players at any time. tl;dr me. An in-development isometric sandbox MMO. Pretty much all PvP based, pretty much no PvE, quests. Open PvP/Full loot. Limited grind and anti poopsocking. Designed for people with Lives(TM). Classless, with gear type determining skills. No tab targeting, with everything like a skillshot or an AOE. Friendly fire and enemy healing. Everything player-crafted, including the towns. Vote on server settings. The server blows up every month or three. What does the name mean? It means 'The Valley' in German. The devs are a small, mostly German team. What does it look like? A little like this:   This guy made some good pre-alpha gameplay footage if you can stand his music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUJ-rB7LTZc What was that about the server exploding? The devs call it 'time-boxing', and its probably the most controversial feature in the game. It's essentially seasonal servers. Each server is intended to have a progression 'arc', like a server-wide beginning, middle, and endgame. After a predetermined amount of time (like one or three months), a big end-of-the-world event happens and the server wipes. Its kind of a divisive choice, but it lets the game do a few things: One is it helps new players into the game. Most open-pvp full-loot games involve new players getting one-shot by max-capped sperg-gods until they quit. This game is meant to have several small servers, with server resets staggered, so if you join after launch, or rejoin after a break, there should always be a new one starting up for that new server smell. It also lets the game do some interesting things with player levels. Level-cap for characters slowly increases over the first month of server time. This means you can't poopsock your way to maxcap ahead of everyone else, and the game isn't a race to maxcap in order to get to 'the real game'. It also means that you can keep up with everyone else's level while playing casually. I repeat, someone is making a full loot open PvP sandbox MMO for casuals. That's got to be worth something. Anyway, town building/resource control is also supposed to be a big aspect of clan stuff. Town building also tends to get pretty boring once you've already built everything. Blowing it all up resets the power balance/keeps building relevant. The devs also want players to be able to vote on map and server configuration before each restart. This means they can try out a bunch of experimental map types and balance things without making GBS threads up the servers already there. But I'll loose all my stuff! Its full loot. You were going to loose it anyway. As a PvP game, your level only really matters in comparison to everyone else's, and they reset with you. Cosmetics are also probably persistant. Isn't full loot a dumb outdated mechanic? Maybe! But they're trying to make it workable here. There's meant to be separate tiers of equipment, but instead of higher tiers having strictly better stats, they're supposed to have a have more specialized stats. Higher tier gear would have better bonuses in some things, but greater penalties in others. So gear upgrades are more about min-maxing your stat spread than getting a strict numerical advantage. If that actually happens, it means even starting gear could be viable at max level, so getting your poo poo stolen isn't that big of a loss. Is friendly fire with pubbies as hilarious as it sounds? Yes, it is exactly as hilarious as it sounds. How do I give them my money?   The Almightly Kickstarter  This whole thing sounds janky and awful. The game is setting out to to do a lot of things differently, so it will either be really cool and unique, or crash and burn spectacularly. Possibly both. Fingers crossed. Links: Official Site Official Forums Dev Youtube Pavlov fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Jun 12, 2015 |
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Feb 6, 2015 00:23
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 01:43 |
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drat it goons I am going to hype you on this game whether you like it or not. So there's a big test happening tomorrow (Feb 8th) at 8:00 PM CET (German time). That's 2:00 PM if you're in EST. Supposedly you can get in without an alpha key for the 24 hours after that starts. Download the stuff Here. They've set up a little micro-scale map for people to gently caress around with and murder each other in. If you're even a little bit interested, you can pop in and get a really rough idea of what the game's trying to be. Some of the devs will also be hanging out in the Teamspeak given in the above link. You can sign on to
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Feb 7, 2015 20:34
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Helmholz posted:Patching the alpha client now. This looks fun! It's still really unfinished, but I think it could become fun. The 24 hour thing doesn't start until tomorrow though. The launcher bugs out sometimes and won't finish. If that happens to you, just wait until after the servers have started tomorrow (so you're sure the new patch is out) and download the client directly from the download page. Edit: Yeah don't buy into the alpha right now unless you got money to burn (It's the 50$ one that gets you in on current alpha sessions). Just try it out tomorrow and sign up for the key-lottery if you liked it. Pavlov fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Feb 8, 2015 |
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Feb 8, 2015 00:08
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Helmholz posted:I gave them my email, is that really all it takes to get into the key lottery? (jack squattery) There should be an email confirmation and maybe a short form, but otherwise yeah that's it. If there's a box that asks why you'd be a good tester, don't leave it blank. Apparently they look at that. Helmholz posted:What is this 24 hour thing? It's related to this blog post. They're trying for a larger scale stress test. What they didn't advertise is they didn't care to generate a bunch of one-time keys, so during the test they're just letting anyone connect to the server if they leave the key field blank.
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Feb 8, 2015 00:25
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Jackard posted:Will take a look but I don't founder/kickstart anything after being burned by Mortal Online and the original FF14 I feel you mate. I only got in because I got a discount, and because the devs really seem to listen to the people playing so far.
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Feb 8, 2015 01:32
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http://www.das-tal-game.com/RPGReadMe I don't think they had this linked publicly, but this page explains some of the mechanics from the last test, most of which probably still apply. I think its currently still arena-ish style maps. You hold strategic points which generate resources, and periodically go up for contention. Stick a bunch of mats into a town to claim it/build it up. Use the town to upgrade skills, or with more mats to build gear. Kill pubbies repeat. It's all really rough around the edges and the server will probably reset a few times, but if you can get a handful of people to square off the combat can be pretty fun.
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Feb 8, 2015 02:05
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Helmholz posted:I understand that they're putting a lot of emphasis on developing PvP in this stage of the game's development, but I've got a new nagging questions about how everything is going to work out in the long run. I noticed that "PvP in a small world" is a reoccurring theme on the forums in topics posted by dev's. I've also noticed the ever-present minimap in all of the game's footage. Do they plan on expanding the world to fit the expectation of a typical MMO, and is this small arena-like area only being used for testing purposes? I'm not 100% sure I'd still be as interested as I am now if I were to hear that the game is going the way of a MOBA with basebuilding and resource-collecting elements. Not to say that the idea wouldn't be novel, just that it wouldn't appeal to me the same way if marketed as an MMO. The current map size is for testing yes. The devs have said they want the release maps to take 'about 15 minutes' to run from one side of the map to the other. That's small for an MMO, but this game isn't quest/pve focused. If you took out all the open fields full of wandering mobs out of your average MMO, it would be a lot smaller as well. A lot of MMOs have big sprawling vistas filled with nothing really important. If you're looking for that, you probably won't find it here. The devs seem to be leaning towards having an average of about 200 people logged in per server, with as many servers as they need to support the playerbase. They've said that 200 players online needs about 2000 active players to support it, plus however many infrequents. This is also small for an MMO. But it also means it will be harder for giant, consolidated powerbases to form, which might be a good thing. If this ever took off as a goon game it would need a bunch of smaller guilds across server instead of a giant goonswarm.
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Feb 8, 2015 03:37
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Rabbi posted:Hmmmmmmm.... For clans at least, resources are supposed to be generated over time in production facilities that you have to capture and keep. The devs seem kind of up in the air about what you do without a clan, but I've heard something about "treasure chest" things that might spawn randomly around the map for anyone to grab. There are going to be some wandering mobs, but they're supposed to drop little EXP 'trinkets', not crafting resources. They want to have 3 biomes for release. I think the two we haven't seen yet are 'toxic-swamp' and something mountainous and rockey. I seem to recall one of them saying they want different resources to be more prevalent in different areas, but I can't find the source for that.
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Feb 8, 2015 17:50
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Yeah launcher breaks for some people (It does for me). I'd recommend just getting the laucherless client from the downloads page. Alternatively if you download the standalone client, and the laucher, you can put the 'client' folder inside the 'launcher' folder, and sometimes that works. Anyway, when you get in and make a character, it'll ask you for your starting weapon/armor. You can swap out later or make a new character if you want. Almost any combination works, but here are some tips: - Scythe/Leather is good for chasing. - Scythe/Splint is good for holding points. - Totem/Leather lets you kite forever. - Staff/Robes gives the most AoE. - Scythe/Robes is good for breaking stacks. - Bow/Anything gets the best range. Also if you shoot a staff blast point blank it will damage you too. If anyone wants to group up, I'm seeing if I can get a room on the dev's teamspeak. Otherwise we could use camping the stairs. Anyone care?
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Feb 8, 2015 19:18
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Jackard posted:Might as well just use CTS Pretty much. They're trying to get a feel for what it should be like for players when the servers are just starting up. That and tweaking all the weapon/armor combos.
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Feb 8, 2015 19:32
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Ok, get on CTS if you didn't know how to already. We're in the Misc section at the bottom in a Das Tal room.
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Feb 8, 2015 19:47
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Jackard posted:Checked back in three hours after it began... Hehe yeah, it turned into a zergfest. There might be another open test next month. For that one the devs said they want a 4x size map, with some kind of neutral settlement to hold people off until settlements can get made. Should probably help some.
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Feb 8, 2015 23:34
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I guess they never put in that gate art asset.
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Feb 9, 2015 03:15
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Jackard posted:'Hovel' may be more appropriate than 'shack', help me out here I'm partial to 'shanty'.
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Feb 9, 2015 03:48
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Puistokemisti posted:Sounds like a good system. I'm sure that in real game guilds don't abuse their ability to lock down whole map. But it's ok, if you are on a server where a guild has conquered everything, you can just change servers and hope that this time you happen to join the winning guild so that you can teabag everyone else until they jump to another server too. The devs apparently don't even want mega-guilds to be a thing. There'll probably be capping max guild members. Of course, people could just make a bunch of allied splinter-guilds, but that makes it harder to fight as a team, and also increases the chances of power-grabs and in-fighting. I still think it needs something else though. I've been suggesting diminishing returns on resource points held by a single guild.
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Feb 9, 2015 15:23
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Jackard posted:Sent them in-game feedback yesterday but wasn't expecting a reply let alone this soon.. wonder how much they were given. This kind of thing is like half the reason I'm bothering with the alpha instead of waiting for release. They probably got a lot of people shouting at them yesterday, and I wouldn't be surprised if they responded to all of it. They do like, open Q&A in voicechat when tests are happening. If you ask a question on their forum, they'll respond with big effortposts about their design methodology. You can shoot them emails and they respond too. They may be kind of spotty on stress test design, but I still always got the sense they gave a poo poo. Pavlov fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 15:44
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New Dev recap on the test. Also:Dev Blog posted:You guys sent in over 250 bug reports so far and I’m barely keeping up with reading, documenting and replying to each single one. Yup, called it, they're totally giving individual responses to every bug report. I'm not sure if that's dedication or masochism.
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Feb 9, 2015 18:24
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Hey assholes remember this game? Remember how all the sound effects were hilariously awful placeholders? Well it looks like they discovered sound design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKcUEK0eSKM
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Mar 14, 2015 22:35
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No but I don't usually judge my MMOs on geological realism.
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Mar 14, 2015 23:28
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So they're having a close alpha test this upcoming saturday (the 28th), and it looks like it should be a lot better than the last one. The devs supposedly sent out a bunch of alpha keys recently, did anyone manage to get one?
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Mar 23, 2015 20:06
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As far as gameplay goes the big ones are: The map is 4x as big, so hopefully you can move without tripping over a zerg now. There's a little neutral village that lets people actually get all their skills / make basic gear before building a guild town. There are 2x the number of resource points, with more than one active at a time, so the whole map doesn't try to fit in the same 10 meter square. They put in kind of a GW2 style rez/dunk system for dealing with downed players. A basic weight system. You have to split up the resources if you want to get enough to build town stuff, so more targets to steal from. Edit: Also a world map so you can tell where the hell you are. Pavlov fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 20:39
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Yeah, it's almost like they're responding to feedback or something.
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Mar 23, 2015 20:58
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Jackard posted:That open was pretty clearly hosed right from the start. Whats the purpose of making this a closed test? Seems like what they need for an honest open look at the early game. They seem to go through rounds of 'people who spent $$$', closed testers, open testers. I think they get different kinds of feedback from different groups. They seem to have this issue where they really want to bring in people and show off what they've done, but they also don't want to turn off everyone with the problems that are still there. I'm also hoping they realized that the last open test miffed some people and they want to get this one down better in-house before they try to show it off to the public again.
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Mar 23, 2015 21:33
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Some dude with an eclectic taste in music took some good footage of the last playtest, which turned out pretty drat fun. I was on the other side, and I'm sure if you look closely you can spot me somewhere shooting my allies in the back. Game is getting pretty ok. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUJ-rB7LTZc
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Apr 21, 2015 02:16
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Guess what game has a Kickstarter now? Quick, part yourselves from your dollars! But honestly, if you were on the fence, an early-bird special is probably the best deal you're going to get. I also updated the OP a bit.
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May 12, 2015 14:58
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Honestly yeah it is a bit. They're not particularly desperate for funding, so they're selling for a bit less than retail price with some added perks tacked on. It is a buy to play game so I think they don't want to cut too deep into their release sales and go under from lack of funding later on.
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May 12, 2015 19:09
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So the kickstarter's doing kind of mediocre, but it still has a good chance to be funded. The devs have been giving pretty much daily updates on various topics, the most recent of which was pretty cool. The game's not going to have quest givers, but just having a big empty space to fight people in gets boring after a while, so they've posted their planed list of world events for people to do in down-time and/or coax people into fighting over. Some of which are pretty creative.
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May 22, 2015 21:26
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To people who thought the kickstarter was too expensive, here ya go:Dev Blog posted:We have collected a lot of feedback over the last week. One thing that we heard a lot was that €40 is a bit too expensive for a game during early alpha. We still feel that a higher launch price is necessary, because we are making a very specialized game for a niche audience (and thus will sell fewer copies than if we made it a game “for everybody”). But we still want to give more people the chance to support us now and experience the game first hand for a lower entry price. So we have come up with the concept of the SENTINEL tier. If you get an early bird it's €15 ($16), and you get invites to some random test days through the alpha/beta, plus access to one seasonal server at launch. If you like it, you can upgrade to the normal game for €25 after launch, otherwise you're only down 15 on a game priced at 50. If you weren't sure about the game, or thought it would only be good for a goonrush, this is pretty much the "I'm not sure about this game" package. The other thing they mentioned was that the first 'sneak peak' is on the 31st, which is before the kickstarter ends. I guess that means if you pledge now, they'll send you an email in the next week with a key for that day. You could withdraw your pledge after that if you wanted, but I'll love you more if you don't. Anyone interested?
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May 26, 2015 20:29
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Yeah the kickstarter is pretty boned. The game's still getting made though and they'll probably get some of it anyway from people shifting their kickstarter pledges to founders packs from their site. You only needed to fake-pledge for the test before this and no one seemed interested, so I didn't mention the one tomorrow. I'd still be willing to wrangle something if people want though. I figure if HMO goons were going to care they would have by now. Thinking I'll make a new thread in Games when this hits beta and try recruiting MOBA players 
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Jun 8, 2015 21:48
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I guess people spent all their money on crowfall instead. Crowfall! 
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Jun 8, 2015 22:34
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Yup, free day today. Ok, if you want to group up, come to the CTS mumble Misc->Angry Dome->Das Tal. I'll be hanging out there.
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Jun 9, 2015 23:08
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Not sure. If there are they probably haven't been posted yet.
Pavlov fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Jun 10, 2015 05:06
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Oh wow I got caught up in Chinagame 3.0 for a bit there and haven't been participating as much in the tests recently. Now that that's done I guess I'll be jumping back in. Yes the weapon/armor skills have worked pretty well in the tests I've done. It's painless to swap sets, so you're free to experiment, and it manages a pretty decent balance between having identifiable roles and cusomizability. Now, the actual balance has swung around a lot, but that's kind of to be expected.
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Aug 25, 2015 15:55
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1.0 -> Wushu 2.0 -> Swordsman 3.0 -> Moonlight Blade Moonlight Blade is only in chinese, and only has servers in china, so I wouldn't recommend it to most people. There aren't really goons playing, it was just a summer fling.
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Aug 28, 2015 04:54
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Test is starting in a few minutes. I'm not trying to organize anything, but feel free to jump in anyway.
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Aug 29, 2015 18:53
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I've been staggering the alphas I test on, to keep from burning out before we get a launch. Haven't jumped into this one yet. It has though been getting slowly more polished, and is looking more like a game than a tech demo at this point. Gear still isn't that important last I checked. Having a full skillbar and having those skills upgraded is very noticeable though. The guy you fought probably didn't have too much more health than you, he was just doing more damage to you. Upgrading skills are the only way to get more damage on them, not gear. I'm still waiting for the beta to make a games thread to start selling this again.
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Mar 21, 2016 04:07
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I believe it lasts to the 31st.
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Mar 21, 2016 21:27
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I think they've tweaked the crafting system a little since I last played, but it's for min-maxing other attributes. They can affect max hp, max mp, speed, cc reduction, cd time, cast time, physical or magic resistance. If you want to pump one stat you have to take a penalty in another though. Higher level gear increases the maximum you can pump or dump from a stat. I think they might have added a really small flat bonus to high level gear a while ago too, but not anything that was noticeable.
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Mar 21, 2016 22:53
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What are you trying to do exactly? Upgrade your skills some? I don't have the game in front of me right now, but I think there may be a limit to how many skill upgrades you can have total, based on your level. I'll have to go check that. In other news: I know we joke that games like this are libertarian paradises, but last night in the official voip I chatted for a while with a guy who works for an objectivist thinktank. He certainly had some interesting political beliefs.
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Mar 22, 2016 17:32
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 01:43 |
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Hmm, probably a bug then. TI'd say try to see if there's a pattern and report it.
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Mar 22, 2016 18:48
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