Aventurine's Tasos Flambouras took the forums yesterday evening to discuss Darkfall's character progression.
Debate over character progression has been a hot topic in the Darkfall community, and so in an attempt to follow through on their newly announced commitment to improve player communications Tasos took some time to provide players with some background information, explain Aventurine's intentions, shed some light on what the team has identified as issues, and discuss what they've been doing and plan to do in the future to address said issues with regards to character progression.
Tasos on "viability":
Let’s define what we mean by "viable" today: Timeframe: Approximately two months of a moderate time invested playing the game. Your character has most of the skills required for basic PvP combat, a decent supply of equipment in your bank, and you have approximately doubled your starting stats.
After launch we identified several problems early on, on the way to becoming "viable" which we addressed by dramatically raising the gains while fighting monsters in both magic and melee, introducing changes in PvE, introducing auto-harvesting, added the Industry skill which reduces crafting time across the board, skill books and scrolls, attribute consumables, and last but not least we added newbie protection. We also added various time-saving measures including bag naming, auto stacking of items, and increasing ship speed. We feel that all these together help significantly improve the transition f Aion starting to viable. There are several other things we’re working on which will help this even further. It made sense to us to focus on this first, it being the starting experience.
We also learned that Prestige Classes will be coming in "Darkfall 2010" which is set to release by Q4 2010, much to the surprise of many players who thought they had been shelved:
A major feature on the way are the Prestige Classes. This is not a minor change, it will actually change the way Darkfall is played. They will take your preferred play-style to a new level and set you apart. These have been a long-term project that we’ve been working on for a while now. They will be a part of Darkfall 2010 launching sometime during Q4 2010.
