Concerns about the direction of the game so far


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11/12/2025 7:56:17

Bluu
Member

Heya! I've been having some concerns about the releases ever since the spectacular Book 3 finale released, and I wanted to make a thread to talk about it!

I do hope that I do not come off as too negative with this post, as I want my opinions and my criticism to be taken in a constructive light such that it may improve the quality of the game overall. I feel as though, ever since the release of the Book 3 Finale Epilogue, the game has sorely lacked a direction or tangible milestones to look forward to.

First off, I will express that I am personally extremely grateful for all the work being invested into rewriting Book 1 and Book 2. Book 1 being as nostalgic and cutely charming as it is, deserves to be in line with the overall quality of the game. Be this the pacing of the plot, the placement of the quests and their givers, the rewrites to the somewhat clunky, typo-laden dialogue, and the complete lack of music, being able to revisit stories from my childhood with the experiences of my adulthood is genuinely very heartwarming and dear to me. I appreciate all the work that has put into this.

Secondly, another thing I want to appreciate is that several features that were promised years ago were finally delivered through us in the form of the Eirn and Yashta guests as well as Archnalchemy. Despite these guests being characters I will never bring along in my journeys on my main, I will absolutely unlock them ASAP on my alts and use them for a bit of roleplay for the quests that allow it. And despite Archnalchemy being a rather minor and mostly negligible benefit, as a minmaxer, I will always appreciate more avenues to increase my potential in the game. I will, however, express that I would not appreciate Dragonfable being like a long-standing gacha game that has way too many avenues to boost your skills in battle by a marginal amount rather than having one defined combat system to fall back on. I think that Dragonfable has a very solid base and that, while Archnalchemy was great, I would not appreciate many more features of this style unless they have to do with food or consumables.

That being said, I do want to bring light to my issue with the way development is being handled right now - and that would be that there is currently no concrete goal that the dev team has set for themselves, to which to work towards. I completely understand the need for an interlude period after the completion of such a major arc, all the while many great releases were being worked on, but I do think that it's quite a shame that we have had no major project to look towards. I'm sure that the developers are tired of hearing Fleshweaver requests, but it has been a full decade since the class was announced. Several classes have been released and revamped since then. I think it's only very fair to push in requests for Fleshweaver during a period where releases are explicitly branded to be worldbuilding, revamps, or filler. This has been something that, and I hope I'm not mistaken when I say this, but it has been something that teh entire community has been excited for and anticipating for several years now. I can guarantee that several returning players look for news about Fleshweaver when they come back to the game's design notes. I think we deserve a reasonable timeframe for when the class will be released such that we may hold the devs accountable. It's been a very long wait and we'd love to finally have the class to fool around in the game with!

I will start with the releases I liked: Void Voyage, for its introduction to Yashta and Eirn as enemies you can face and guests you can take with you. Despite my friends thinking of it as rather middling, I personally really enjoyed that challenge and I think it's a very unique addition to the game, and the quests that the guests got to unlock them were genuinely very nice additions. Yashta's quest even had multiple paths you could take to accomplish the goal and two good cosmetics that you could obtain for it. Star Defenders is another release I loved for it being a challenging and unique fight, as controverisal as it was. Crane Master may be a bit overtuned and Sparkle Boy undertuned, and I understand people's concerns with the asset reuse, but I don't care because it led to the invention of a fight that I genuinely enjoyed playing through with several classes. Drakath (Champion of Chaos) isn't my favorite fight in the inn but I do enjoy the unique approach it took to a difficult fight and the great translation of the MMORPG AQW mechanics into a turn-based game. That could not have been easy to accomplish and I do respect the effort behind it. Archnalchemy, while only a marginal upgrade, is actually nice to have and opens up some cute strategies with classes like Paladin that direly lack DoTs or classes that appreciate having slightly more juiced up nukes.

My friend TFS hosted a poll recently and the results overwhelmingly showed, however, that the interest in the game from the part of endgame players was dropping. Out of the 16 voters, 56% have stopped playing the game due to boring releases and 38% were not inn minmaxers. I fear that this is a bad statistic. It's relevant to mention that my friends Harken and Coddiwomple, who were not part of the poll due to not being on the server on which it was conducted, still do play the game regularly and enjoy attempting every new fight with multiple classes or attempting old fights with revamped or bad classes. I feel as though this proves that the game has something to hold people's interest in, but that just isn't being meaningfully channeled.

It's been more than a year since The End of Magic Finale and, as I said earlier, I do appreciate the need for the developers to have a more chill interlude period. However, the quality of the releases has taken a hit since the previous year. Outside of particularly good inn releases, the rest of the releases have generally skewed to the negative side amongst the opinions of longstanding players. The Book 1 and Book 2 rewrites are great releases in my opinion, but alongside TFS, TheErosionSeeker, and Baron Dante, I feel like we are in the minority of players that look forward to such releases. In short, they do nothing to appeal to the longstanding playerbase that this game has miraculously managed to maintain. It's unfortunate and I 100% understand the need for these releases, but they should be intermittent between genuinely good or cool story releases. Apart from the Lorekeeper releases in Red Queen's Gambit and the continuation of the Dragesvard storyline, there hasn't been much to which to look forward plotwise.

There have of course been a few balance patches since then, and I do really respect the effort put into them. Balance patches are so important even for a single-player game like this and I appreciate Verlyrus for putting in the effort to try and make the entire game fair and balanced. Some of them have been huge misses like the Deathknight Healing Presence change, but that's bound to happen. However, it is important to note that such patches are not well-received by the more casual community of this game. I think that balance patches should be relegated to large inn releases because such content is obviously relegated to endgame minmaxxers.

As for inn releases, I think that most of us will agree when I say that we would appreciate more inn releases centered around iconic DF characters and battles. Most of us would love an Extreme Sepulchure/Valen battle. I understand the need to reuse assets from other parts of DF or other AE games but more GOOD fights based on original DF characters would be greatly appreciated. Unending Empires was considered one of the best releases in the game for a very good reason, and there are monsters like Brakenberry, Okuchi no Okami, and Corrupted Captain Davey, that have no representation in endgame content when genuine randos from games we didn't even know still existed get fully fledged inn fights for themselves. I appreciate the intent behind The Unleashed, Deimos Mortis, Swan Song Ex, etc, but like, most DF players don't actually play other AE games lmao

Also, the elephant in the room. Fleshweaver. A time like this is a perfect time for a project that has been teased over TEN YEARS to be released. In fact, there has been a lot of unrest about this topic, and of course, Dove, in all his helpfulness, came into the chat to STILL SAY that Fleshweaver would take two weeks to release if you had the time WHILE PEOPLE WERE CRASHING OUT ABOUT NOT HAVING IT YET. It's gotten to a point where our friend group has inside jokes about how lazy Dove is and how he does nothing for the game. I'm sorry, I hate participating in this kind of banter, but come on brother. I genuinely dislike Dove's intentions towards Fleshweaver so far. I feel live we've been given promises upon promises to look forward to and build hype towards, but it's always been hollow and empty. It's really gotten to a point where some of us don't even care whether the class is released anymore so that the only animator for the game can actually focus 100% of his energy on other stuff. I really really hate to say this. I want you to trust that I am not a vile person, despite what my own words and the opinions of others will say about me, but if Fleshweaver isn't released by mid 2026, I'm probably going to quit the game out of sheer disappointment.

This isn't even to mention how much of a workload the Fleshweaver promises have on the game's development. Expecting the overworked Verlyrus to write versions of quests with and without Aegis is ridiculous. Locking NPCs and dialogue behind a choice that can largely only be reverted and taken by DCs (after the first acceptance and reversion) is insane for how small the dev team is. The Proclamation should've made it obvious that this isn't feasible for a game of this size. Most other evil classes are relegated to non-canon DC stuff and I think it's actually better for the game to relegate FW to DCs as well, or at least to non-canonity. Players that like the class may indeed write their own headcanons of their journey down the dark path, but the class does not have to actually influence your gameplay because literal enTropy and Kathool Adept don't do it either, not to mention Chaosweaver, which is sold by the same vendor. Soulweaver being one of the only canonical classes to the player does absolutely not deserve to be deleted if one chooses to use Fleshweaver. It's a fantastic and lore-relevant class and it deserves a lot better than being some trade-off on an artificial weighing scale.

Furthermore, I feel as though some releases, like the recent EPL/AARGH release - mainly the AARGH aspect of it, although the EPL animations, the way Callum and I have discussed it on the other thread, are worth mentioning - genuinely detract from the game in quality. Me and others have expressed on that thread our opinions on that release and why it was subpar. And that was only the most offensive in a long line of rather bland releases.

We all know that DF is a lot better than what it has been during the past year and we want it to go back to the high high it was during early-mid 2024. It never will because the reigning popular discord server for the game is led by braindead morons but that's besides the point.

I hope I was halfway coherent with this post. I don't want it to be overly positive or negative, but being as drunk as I am typing this out, I can't guarantee much. I do hope that I got some relevant points across nevertheless, and I feel like this and my arguments towards my bughunter/tester friend expresses in full what I find lacking in the recent releases over the past year.

Profanity removed. Self-censored or otherwise, profanity is not allowed on the forums. ~Gingkage

< Message edited by Gingkage -- 11/14/2025 20:06:41 >

Post #: 1

11/12/2025 13:45:48

TFS
Helpful!

I feel obliged to contribute to this thread so

For the past year or so I've seen this persistent sentiment of player disinterest in the small handful of DF communities that are still active, and was bored a couple weeks ago so I polled around and then discussed results with a few friends. Outside of the main Falcon's Nest discord chat (which is pretty averse to any serious discussion), players mentioned one or more of the following:
-Many players are disinterested with the lack of ongoing projects, as the main story ended over a year ago and something like a new class (perhaps Fleshweaver) is not actually being developed despite the lack of story content to deprioritize it.
-Endgame players specifically are disinterested with how recent Inn bosses have consistently been thematically uninspired, middle-of-the-road 3/5 difficulty, and offered a reward that's just a marginal upgrade to an existing item rather than something completely new to play with.
-Regular players who log in every single week are disinterested with / skip Book 1 revamps, as these don't have either new story content, or gameplay content that matters to regular players. A common response I saw was mention of Josh Strife Hayes.

Personally I kind of agree with the first two points, but strongly disagree with the third one. Any opinion I could possibly offer is probably covered somewhere in Bluu's post above, so I'll keep it brief. I'll send this link around so people can offer their thoughts ig

< Message edited by TFS -- 11/12/2025 13:54:36 >

Post #: 2

11/12/2025 20:48:12

Verlyrus
DragonFable Boxcat

We're already planning on moving the Book 1 revisits aside after hitting the Orb Saga, (for those wondering about a Necromancer rework/update, that will still happen eventually).
After that, we want to finish the Book 2 Reimagined project as soon as possible. Depending on how heavy the script writing for that ends up being for me, that could mean 2 weeks of Reimagined a month until that is complete, or 1 Week of Reimagined, 1 week for other projects.

I also want to say that due to very negative feedback whenever we shared Fleshweaver progress, we have not shared anymore. But it is being worked on. For example, with this month's AARGH release, Dove was able to focus on things other than the main release. We know players want us to prioritize it more and we are. But it's a bit of a catch 22 when we get criticized for sharing progress and then also for not.

Inn fights have settle dwhere they are due to a similar reason. Too easy of fights, and very few people are satisfied. Too hard/annoying and people are vocal about how they dislike it. Meaningful rewards are even harder to implement considering such things require programming budget.... which is usually spent on the fights themselves, or is taken from other weeks' or projects. That isnt to say that i dont think it would be cool to have more of that sort of thing, and in fact, i've been adding more and more support for cool things/effrcts behind the scenes for cool stuff, but the matter is time and brain budget to properly create, test, and balance these things on already coding/design/testing packed arena weeks.

Hopefully, once we've finished the Book 2 Reimagined project, we'll be able to have a "do projects" week that would get us this extra time and brain and creativity budget, but it also doesnt feel good not releasing someyhing every week, so we will have to see how it goes.

I hope that addresses the concerns.

Edit: addressing some of the concerns around fleshweaver's implmentation, a lot of the things that were said years ago were said before we had an established direction, and were said to "be exciting" or just be different/unique. In DragonFable's current direction, I think it should hopefully be clear that we would strive to both not take away fun or options from players, as well as not making even more work for ourselves.

As for things to look forward to, I have two major coding projects in the works, one which is coming out this week, and the other which will need me to create and hook up a UI to, but technically is working. Depending on how I am doing, since writing reimagined/revisit and coding arena stuff takes a lot out of me, I may finally be able to finalize Book 4's plans and begin script writing. (Characters, themes, and other documentation has been written already, and is still being updated when I can find thr time.) If you find yourself asking, "what have you been doing for a whole year, then?", the answer is DragonFable releases, every week.

< Message edited by Verlyrus -- 11/12/2025 21:48:33 >

Post #: 3

11/13/2025 1:01:23

Bluu
Member

I appreciate the very quick response to this feedback thread. Thank you for that, Verlyrus. It's always been evident how much you care about the game but more so now that you care about the community as well.

quote:

-Endgame players specifically are disinterested with how recent Inn bosses have consistently been thematically uninspired, middle-of-the-road 3/5 difficulty, and offered a reward that's just a marginal upgrade to an existing item rather than something completely new to play with.

First off, I want to disagree with TFS' point here personally. As someone who has been around the inn's block, I personally really appreciate and enjoy such items being rewards from fights! Minmaxing this game is a lot of fun for me and Threads of the Lost was a great item to get to play with. I haven't beaten The Unleashed yet but the weapon you get from it also looks pretty good based on the forum entry.

quote:

I also want to say that due to very negative feedback whenever we shared Fleshweaver progress, we have not shared anymore. But it is being worked on. For example, with this month's AARGH release, Dove was able to focus on things other than the main release. We know players want us to prioritize it more and we are. But it's a bit of a catch 22 when we get criticized for sharing progress and then also for not.

I'm sorry to hear that - I hope you know that we as players aren't vengeful towards the developers because of this but I think you agree with me that Dove was genuinely terrible in the way he went around marketing the class as if it was already 75% finished. No hate to the man, I used to lowkey look up to him as a kid, but I disagree with many of his decisions there.

As for what you personally said about inn content (bit long to quote), I assure you that we do see the effort and the hard work that you put in, but the actual choices for the bosses in the inn are not the best. Many iconic DF characters like Sepulchure, Caitiff, Vaal, and Roirr had old and bad fights already, and many iconic new DF characters are not on the board. I think I speak for everyone when I say we would all prefer a duo, like say, Mazurek and Ruuma? Random DF characters with a common theme in knowing and disliking Khvorost and also loving the seas, over totally random AQ/AQW/ED characters because the overlap between players that play DF and other AE games is actually very small.

quote:

Edit: addressing some of the concerns around fleshweaver's implmentation, a lot of the things that were said years ago were said before we had an established direction, and were said to "be exciting" or just be different/unique. In DragonFable's current direction, I think it should hopefully be clear that we would strive to both not take away fun or options from players, as well as not making even more work for ourselves.

I'm glad to hear this. Soulweaver looked like it was a lot of effort for all the developers to revamp and reimagine. It would not do to have that be an option that could be permanently locked out from a character, should someone choose to go with Fleshweaver instead. I'm grateful that it is being acknowledged how absurd some of the promises were and weirdly enough? I am grateful that they are being called out openly as false.

I'm excited to see your new projects, man. And I'm sorry if I came off a bit harsh or strong, but I think you know how much I love this game and that I only make such posts because I want it to improve LOL

Post #: 4

11/13/2025 10:27:29

Verlyrus
DragonFable Boxcat

Don't feel like you need to ever apologize for expressing criticism or frustration. I like to think I have a good feel of the community's "vibe", and it's definitely been feeling down for a bit, after peaking up from the summer and the Northlands story start. Exacerbated, in part, by some recent "cosmetic spam" updates, and relatively few changes to the Book 2 Reimagined, so I get it.

I have my own concerns, of course, as a result but I hope things will pick up once we're out of this small lull.

Post #: 5

11/14/2025 14:10:19

Maxtrigon
Member

quote:

I also want to say that due to very negative feedback whenever we shared Fleshweaver progress, we have not shared anymore. But it is being worked on. For example, with this month's AARGH release, Dove was able to focus on things other than the main release. We know players want us to prioritize it more and we are. But it's a bit of a catch 22 when we get criticized for sharing progress and then also for not.

Hello! I'm not sure why this was worded as though you guys sharing Fleshweaver progress was ever the issue being criticized but at least from what I can recall from the one Discord server I was in during both times that I was present and engaging the conversation, the feedback was primarily directed towards the lack of information and the "hope-baiting" that Dove would engage in and joke about FW's release. While I understand that always having to hear about it, have it be a talking point, or even suggest that it take over other perhaps higher priority issues can be immensely frustrating, I would prefer that you didn't misrepresent the situation as it was rolling out. Yes the feedback was, at some points, overtly critical and while it was related to Fleshweaver, unless it was far more about how little information was given and Dove's behavior regarding his class and how he would, presuming good faith, joke or meme about it's imminent release.

I think the idea that we keep getting little morsels of information (like the final confirmation that FW will not have that previously mentioned story split which was the running story most players assumed to be true given, again, no evidence to the contrary) and being told how close it is and have been for the past 10+ years since this class's public inception was revealed is the reason for such very negative feedback as collectively speaking it's tiring always being told the same thing year after year after year with only relying on the same decade old info with nothing new about it. And the things that do get shared, are often dropped with very little more explanation than just "it was an idea at the time that's no longer relevant" (such as dropping that at some point Fleshweaver was to have DC-locked elemental skills/spirits without any elaboration until like 2 months later).

I want to close this out by saying that I do not want FW because it will radically change the game, nor because it's a core feature that's been missing forever. It is a class that was prematurely revealed during a time in which there was severe issues going on both publicly and behind the scenes. HOWEVER, that doesn't change the fact that what I want and what we've been asking for is just more transparency when it comes to these things. We do want information, but we want it complete and something to actually tell us how far you've guys come. Saying it's had work done means nothing when we also know that some odd months back only half of the class's skills were done and last month how the animations were just a few left along with training quests and testing and coding. Progress has no meaning when we don't have a clear start and end point and that's all we want.

Post #: 6

11/14/2025 20:35:13

Coddiwomple
Member

quote:

My friend TFS hosted a poll recently and the results overwhelmingly showed, however, that the interest in the game from the part of endgame players was dropping. Out of the 16 voters, 56% have stopped playing the game due to boring releases and 38% were not inn minmaxers. I fear that this is a bad statistic. It's relevant to mention that my friends Harken and Coddiwomple, who were not part of the poll due to not being on the server on which it was conducted, still do play the game regularly and enjoy attempting every new fight with multiple classes or attempting old fights with revamped or bad classes. I feel as though this proves that the game has something to hold people's interest in, but that just isn't being meaningfully channeled.

It's also worth mentioning that we've more or less reached the endpoint with most inn-viable classes, at least when it comes to maintaining the "crutchless" (i. e. no extra potions or consumables) club. I'd be willing to bet that I'm not the only one who thinks that full budget, crutchless clears are a great middle ground for inn enjoyers — it provides a good challenge, and if it's ever too easy, one can always choose to optimize for speed and/or resources. There are also "weakcore" (i. e. using gear that mimics someone's progression through the inn + a 200 pt dragon) restrictions as well as "crutched" challenges with weaker classes, but the former isn't everyone's cup of tea since it can be a bit depriving, and the latter can be seen as less rewarding and more proof of concept. As of writing, a whopping 15 classes have been able to clear the entirety of the inn with crutchless restrictions, so it's only natural that things have slowed down as the strongest classes have been filtered out of our options for new frontiers. Sure, there's some new ground to tread with reworked EPL, but within a week, most of the inn's hardest challenges have already been beaten by it. Aside from some unexpected snag that may lie ahead, I think this is proof enough for people who don't actively enjoy playing the class that it has the potential to perform as well as the other 15 classes. Doing challenges "top-down" in this manner isn't necessarily wrong; in fact, it's quite understandable, but it can create the perception that the rest of the inn for the class is busywork instead of a slow, steady crawl towards the finish line. Granted, it isn't the fault of the developers that the community has imposed certain standards upon itself when it comes to the inn and recordkeeping, and what feels janitorial to some may be engaging to others. Speaking for myself, I enjoyed running through Entropy's backlog of challenges after Womb's buff simply because I always enjoyed the class and was excited to test the limits of its newfound power. It could very well be the case that somebody has the same passion for EPL, but I have yet to see that manifest (the class was changed as of writing, so perhaps interest will renew).

What we're left with, then, is a lot of inn content involving underpowered classes, weakcore restrictions, or potential reliance upon crutches. Again, it's only natural that we'd get here eventually, but we're now at the point where a lot of people who mostly enjoy crutchless content with strong/competitive classes just wait for the monthly inn challenge or any balance changes. I don't intend to push the devs to "solve" this issue, as it wouldn't be productive to push out piecemeal balance changes just to engage a small portion of the community; rather, I just think it's an unfortunate coincidence to reach this state of affairs while the game outside of this little corner has been winding down as well. There's also the possibility that I'm wrong in assuming that this has been putting a damper on endgame inn enjoyers, but this is just my two cents about it since I haven't seen too many speak about this occurrence in particular.

BUT, tangent aside, I think that challenges could be better, even if I haven't personally minded this year's inn releases (including YD). I'll echo Bluu's sentiment about seeing more DF-exclusive characters, but I also wouldn't mind getting easier challenges. For example, I think it'd be cool to see a medium difficulty multi-fight, about on par with Akriloth, the Protector, or a bit higher. We don't have too many inn fights with 3+ enemies, and having another one would be helpful since the progression of multi-fights after Akriloth, the Protector, is InD and then CS, both of which are notable difficulty spikes with respect to the multi-fight format. I also think fights that give buffs or beneficial mechanics for people to play around with, have options for who to kill first, and provide consistent pressure (e. g. enrages, revives, threatening phase changes) are good ways to spruce up fights that are too easy on first blush. Leaning into the theme of a board more would also be nice, as I distinctly remember Lost Fables being my favorite board when starting the inn, since it gave us glimpses at characters that were mentioned in passing or past their prime, which was really cool! I understand that having too narrow a theme can be restrictive, so I don't fault some boards for having broader ones, but it'd be nice to get a more focused theme when inspiration provides for it.

quote:

The Book 1 and Book 2 rewrites are great releases in my opinion, but alongside TFS, TheErosionSeeker, and Baron Dante, I feel like we are in the minority of players that look forward to such releases.

Just chipping in real quick at the end to say that while I might not be as enthused about them as Bk. 3 releases, the rewrites are important for the game's longevity. Introducing game mechanics more clearly to new players is a big plus in my eyes (bosses getting rotations also helps engagement on quests) for the Bk. 1 rewrites, and seeing how Bk. 2 pans out after being put back into the oven some more has been a bit nice.

Post #: 7

11/15/2025 12:07:03

GodJank
Member

Something that I think would bring back old player attention is focusing on side stories, either by getting in touch with the people in charge of those story lines, or by starting new side stories (thanks Loremaster). The wait for Six Heroes to resume is getting a little ridiculous.

Otherwise I don't really have a lot to say that Bluu hasn't said, because I overwhelmingly agree with much of what he's said. I am in favour of adding more classic DF characters in the Inn, instead of Fartarax and Glup Chungus, Shadow's Edge of Darkness. Yes, I thought The Unleashed was terrible. It's the lack of quality in recent Inn Fights that has made me essentially drop this game. Besides Red Queen's Gambit and Through the Frost, nothing else has really kept me interested. Evolved Pumpkinlord was a welcome surprise, but that rework came out half done too.

I don't mean to be so negative, but it really feels like the quality in releases has taken a massive nosedive, and it's really sad to see this happening, since DragonFable is a game I've played extremely consistently for almost 6 years straight.

Post #: 8

11/15/2025 18:58:50

katcult
Member

Having been with this game since the beginning I am pleased with the rework on Books 1 & 2 to clarify the storylines better. Loved Book 3 and am patiently waiting for Book 4.
'
The thing that has always set this game apart from the rest of the AE family is the fantastic storylines. I personally have never been a fan of the Inn fights - they have no bearing on the storylines and there are enough other AE games where you can just beat an opponent for bragging rights and/or a useful trinket. (I do understand I'm in the minority with this point of view).

Post #: 9

11/16/2025 3:21:09

Arkste
Member

I've played almost every week since 2009 and wanted to share my two-cents here, too. I only ever don't make a Friday release if I have evening plans, or I'm going somewhere.

I play probably more than an outright casual player, but Inn releases do nothing for me. I know I'm probably in the minority, but I have no interest in min-maxing my characters. When an Inn release occurs, I log in and go listen to the boss music then log out. That's it. I do understand that they allow more time to be devoted to other releases. But for me, they're essentially an off-week.

I'd say since the end of Book 3, it feels like the game has been in a constant state of polish, polish, polish. And I think that's fine, but at some point, you need to learn to move forward. I loved the Book 3 rewrites and thought they were some of the best releases to come when they were a focus. But I was also very critical of early Book 3. Book 3 also wasn't finished at the time. It wasn't consistent. Books 1 and 2 were done. They were imperfect, but they had been moved on from. You can't write a book and keep rewriting it year after year after year trying to improve it. At some point, you need to stop and be content with it. I'm loving the Book 2 rewrites, too, but I wouldn't necessarily call them necessary. Thankfully, Book 2 is so short. In the past, and I know it's always been called a Book, but I personally always felt like Book 2 is better designated as an Epilogue to Book 1.

On that note, I like the Book 1 rewrites, too, but we've also been there. It's fine for going through a new character, but it doesn't advance the narrative.

And what's why I play. The plot and the worldbuilding. I enjoy the Book 3 walkarounds even though I do understand why players would not like that they reuse a lot of AQW assets. But I understand that's a budget and staff size concern. One day, I would love to see a fully explorable Lore connecting all the players we can visit. DF was the first fully explorable AE game. It's only natural you should be able to have a world you can explore.

But also, there's not a current sense of narrative direction. We're in this weird sort of place with the interquel duologies of Aiding Mortem along with Red Queen's Gambit and now Through the Frost. I think these have been fun. The first two were short and resolved quickly. There's not really anything you can speculate on. But our adventures in the Northlands feel like they're going to be proper quest saga.

I would like to see more content finished than begun, though. Book 3 is finished. But we have lingering narratives and teases like True Mortal, the Shears and revised Espina Rosa (that I believe Elryn is doing at some point), the Amityvale Alchemsmith has a button for a Weapon quest, Grandiflora never got a resolution in Swordhaven. And some of these haven't been touched in ages. Of course, there's Fleshweaver, but that's already been addressed, so I don't have anything I can really to it. Just to say I'll be awaiting it.

If we continue to receive these interquel-type quest sagas set between Books 3 and 4, I'd be interested in developments in Swordhaven, reactions in Sulen'Eska, and maybe even seeing what became of the Shapeless Empire.

There isn't really a strong narratie hook right now, and that's one of DragonFable's greatest strengths. For me, anyway.

AQW

Epic

Post #: 10

11/18/2025 3:43:45

TheUnfettered
Member

Having been with DF from the beginning, I have seen a lot over the years. I'm a private person by nature so while I would often view the forums if I needed information on this or that, I never felt the urge to participate. Having seen this thread however, I did feel like finally offering some feedback of my own.

1. Baby(/Toddler) Dragon forms
I really think it would be great if in the future, there was an option for DA-holders to choose which dragon "form" they use, be it Baby, Toddler or Kid, while at the same time accessing the Kid Dragon skills, invite-as-guest feature, maybe even do the Dove cosmetic accessories thing too, regardless of how 'old' the dragons are.

I say this as I fell in love with my hangry little lizard the moment it hatched and over the course of 22 years of playing, have refused to age-up any of my dragons even though it means parts of the game (Inn/challenge content in particular) are largely unplayable due to being unable to access the Kid-only skills -- especially after Seaweed/Rotten Hardtack got shredded by nerfkitten claws, lol. It's a bit sad since some of the Inn content is as appealing to me as it is nostalgic (Carnax, Sparkle Boy and Odessa, oh boy!) but the rewards are basically out of my reach.

More than that, I strongly suspect there are other players out there who might prefer Baby/Toddler art to Kid but had to use the 'grow' option. I understand the necessity of gatekeeping, power tiers, etc. (hence the current 'grow' system) but part of the draw to becoming a DA-holder was the promise of being able to customize our dragon to our heart's content. Being unable to utilize all of my dragon's potential perks due to its "age" seems unnecessarily restrictive. It's my hope that this might be addressed one day once larger goals such as Book 4 data has been successfully determined.

2. 'Invite Friend' option
Anybody remember that one? It's been years since it was used and I really miss it because it was fun to invite other player characters to help you fight a boss. While it could obviously be used to simplify fights to an unfair degree, I liked it because I could 'make a party' out of my characters and my friends/family members' characters. It felt like we were tackling a big challenge together -- which given DF's single player mode, really added something magical to the experience for me. I remember back in the day I thought someday we'd see that be done with Titan fights too, to make for a really "big" fight.

Perhaps there are reasons why it hasn't been used for so long (coding? re-balancing boss stats? fear of making it too 'easy' to farm for quest rewards? certain boss fights being scripted to only be winnable with specific guests?) but it was very cool and I'm sad that it seems to have been forgotten, especially in light of epic boss fights like Jaania, the Maleurous, the Proclamation Tytans... things that seem perfect for a 'party' to fight together, even if it isn't "canon." It seems like it would be fun to bring back the invite option at some point, time/interest permitting of course.

3. "Retro" content
As exciting as new content is, that obviously takes time to develop/release. Perhaps permanently re-releasing older "lost" or "rare" content from time to time might help lighten the workload slightly? The idea being that if it already exists somewhere in the DF data archives, it would hopefully be easy enough to add it back in and not take a lot of precious dev-time to implement.

Just off the top of my head, the three Ballyhoo "Shorts" from August '09 could go in the Falconreach Theater, the Xan "Founder's Gauntlet/Founder's Challenge" quest could go on the Book 1 Odd Jobs board or be available from Warlic at some point in Book 1 -- the former due to being quite funny/silly with nicely designed weapons, the latter because it's Xan and you can't ever have enough of his Xan-y antics.

On the subject of holidays, the missing 2012/2015 Grenwog quests would fit nicely in the Lucky Day book. Or maybe they could be given to Orion in Mootropolis, who doesn't have much purpose unless Grenwog content is accessible? Cysero, perhaps? Uaanta's golden cube? As the Grenwog does actually factor into meeting Key and Lock later on in Book 3's storyline it would help to remove a minor plot hole about why the Falconreach Hero knows who and what the Grenwog is, despite the initial meeting quests currently being rare. Past April Fool's Day events were fun too, though sadly those might be more difficult to implement.

Still, little missing things like the above content from DF's past could be used as "retro" style releases to hopefully give yourselves more time to work on other projects/updates while also letting players experience them again after being absent for years -- or to see them for the first time.

-Conclusion-
It's tempting to say/suggest more but others have already covered larger, more important topics with far greater depth and insight than I could hope to do. So I will instead close with something positive: I have enjoyed recent DF content quite a bit, particularly the skillful animations and cool looking equipment.

And I definitely found the recent cosmetic-only updates fun too, since I do love fancy, well-designed gear to add to my collection. I even recently went and showed off the Convergence P2 Jaania boss fight to my mother, a long-retired DF player who got hooked on it along with me for a while, and she was blown away by how far the game has come. Despite having no context for the battle, she was spellbound watching my hero and his baby dragon battling the supreme ice-queen Jaania to decide Lore's future. I plan to show her the Order of Aspect battle soon, and other things if she's interested.

Overall it's truly impressive that DF has been in operation almost continuously since its release while many other games went offline years ago or, as is the case with some big-name MMOs with large companies bankrolling them, are struggling even now. *cough* New World *cough* So long as the DF players and staff alike continue to love and support its growth together, I believe DF will continue to operate successfully for a long time, to joy of us all.

Thank you for listening to our opinions and striving to do your best to keep making DF content available every week. God bless, and Battle On!

Post #: 11

11/19/2025 7:27:00

Bluu
Member

Holy moly, I did not expect this thread to blow up like this. I'm glad to have created an outlet for people to post feedback. That being said, I want to address a few points.

I completely agree with everything @Maxtrigon and @Coddiwomple have said. Could not have worded it better myself.

quote:

What we're left with, then, is a lot of inn content involving underpowered classes, weakcore restrictions, or potential reliance upon crutches. Again, it's only natural that we'd get here eventually, but we're now at the point where a lot of people who mostly enjoy crutchless content with strong/competitive classes just wait for the monthly inn challenge or any balance changes.

Yep, this is precisely the issue. This alone is not unhealthy for the game, but perhaps more of the older crowd that helped tick some of these boxes would be willing to come back and mess around in the game if there were other appealing things to do as well - and it's not that there aren't, but there is an itch that only a main story can scratch, be it bad or good. I also agree about the part of Lost Fables - being able to fight Yalla (Jaania's villain) and Braytes San (Uaanta's villain) whom you would only hear creaks about throughout the story, was really cool. Meeting Gary's ancestor and finding out that Gary's final demotion was actually the role his ancestor played in battle as well, and that he played it effectively, is really cool.

quote:

Just chipping in real quick at the end to say that while I might not be as enthused about them as Bk. 3 releases, the rewrites are important for the game's longevity. Introducing game mechanics more clearly to new players is a big plus in my eyes (bosses getting rotations also helps engagement on quests) for the Bk. 1 rewrites, and seeing how Bk. 2 pans out after being put back into the oven some more has been a bit nice.

Yeah, I was wrong in my presumption that only a few of us were enthusiastic for those releases. I personally love them. There are so many neat and cool things that were added and changed over the past two years that I've wished were in the game for years. The better placement of wars on the timeline is a bonus as well. I do hope that the Book 1 end-of-saga bosses including Medewwsa and Grrrberus from Bacon Origin and... Puce Person Nommer from The Clashening (yes I'm serious, that weird creature is the final on-foot boss for this saga) should recieve mechanics as well. Sepulchure himself should be updated to have an unbeatable fight but not one that is unfair and sloggy-feeling. Perhaps you would be required to get him down to a certain % of his HP for the plot to proceed as intended, and if you fail to, then it counts as a loss, even though the end result is a loss anyway. The Alexander saga does something similar with the first fight with Warlic where he is to be defeated by bringing him to 50% of his max HP. This would be similar to the latest Xan fight where you also autolose, but you are given the chance to attempt the fight anyway. It instills the feeling that you are completely powerless in the face of such enemies.

I agree with @GodJank, but it does seem like ED players are picking up DF because of this fight, which is a feat that the other Crossroads fights haven't managed yet. So I guess there were good things about that fight as well.

quote:

The thing that has always set this game apart from the rest of the AE family is the fantastic storylines. I personally have never been a fan of the Inn fights - they have no bearing on the storylines and there are enough other AE games where you can just beat an opponent for bragging rights and/or a useful trinket. (I do understand I'm in the minority with this point of view).

There being other AE games with challenge content should have no bearing on this discussion. If you don't know, DragonFable was the original challenging AE game. AQW and its ultra bosses followed suit around four years after, and even they paid homage to the Inn at the Edge of Time when they released the Exaltia bosses. The inn has been a major and central part of the game's development so far, and it does actually contribute to the story a lot. There is a book in the Inn that discusses the Exalted lore that Notha keeps blabbering about, and lots of fights in the inn have fantastic flavor elements that add to the general vibe and aesthetic of known and established characters. The Clashening was my favorite in particular because I was excited to see how Lim and Cysero would handle themselves in combat, and it did not disappoint - all of Lim's attacks are based on events during the Clashening + the Event Horizon and Emergency Staticshield skills. Cysero makes references to his hijinks throughout the game. Thyton finally gets to see combat for the first time and man is he formidable, and Greg is a callback to the Lymcrest Labyrinth, which is definitely something that most players have not engaged with. Gorgok and Guardian Dragon also appear in their most powerful forms and you can truly appreciate why the two are considered feared and legendary respectively. You get to see how Maar was before Akriloth burned it down. You get to fight enemies that other characters faced in your absence when you were frozen. There is a lot to love about the inn even if you dislike challenges in general, because those other AE games 100% don't put in the amount of effort that Verlyrus puts in to produce good content, may it sometimes miss the mark.

quote:

And what's why I play. The plot and the worldbuilding. I enjoy the Book 3 walkarounds even though I do understand why players would not like that they reuse a lot of AQW assets. But I understand that's a budget and staff size concern. One day, I would love to see a fully explorable Lore connecting all the players we can visit. DF was the first fully explorable AE game. It's only natural you should be able to have a world you can explore.

Completely agree. It baffled me as a kid that you could actually physically access every single location on the map (including Popsprocket, to which an NPC near Oaklore takes you, although a walkaround to that would be nice as well. Imagine playing Book 3 and walking around the path you're used to and seeing the changes everywhere, only to run into the wreckage of Popsprocket. Matter of fact, I think Popsmashed should be made mandatory upon reaching Falconreach because it's fantastic for the worldbuilding and T.O.D.D. is a really good idea for a bossfight. This place has been so wrecked that the machines that used to serve you during your stay here have no direction anymore. Being a barber bot, he also becomes weaker if you take your helm off!

But I got sidetracked there. The path east of Falconreach having access to Surewould Forest, Elemental Foothills, Lymcrest, Stoneheart Fall, Dragesvard, and Willowshire, as well as The Sandsea and Doomwood Forest is really really cool. The only noteworthy area that is missing is Aika Village, because that was iirc supposed to be how you arrived at Sho'Nuff in the first place. A walkaround within Sho'Nuff itself would also be really nice - the assets are all there already because you've been through those winding woods before, and maybe you would be able to visit Kordana again and have a titan fight with her if you wanted :)

I really wish that once Lorekeeper's current saga is done, work will be done to connect the new Dragesvard and Tyndur's Depths to the main travel map somehow - it can simply use a modified version of the current sailing minigame. Another thing I would love to see would be for paths to open up in Doomwood that connect you from Amityvale to Safiria's Castle (after Red Queen's Gambit), Frydae's Tower (after Blood and Roses), and Chaney's laboratory (after Bitten), and the nomadic ruins (after Broken Circuit). And again, being able to Talk to Thursday after BnR would be nice too.

quote:

Anybody remember that one? It's been years since it was used and I really miss it because it was fun to invite other player characters to help you fight a boss. While it could obviously be used to simplify fights to an unfair degree, I liked it because I could 'make a party' out of my characters and my friends/family members' characters. It felt like we were tackling a big challenge together -- which given DF's single player mode, really added something magical to the experience for me. I remember back in the day I thought someday we'd see that be done with Titan fights too, to make for a really "big" fight.

No, this would be terrible. The bosses would either have to be super easy or unsatisfying or too difficult and unenjoyable. It would turn the boss into an AQW-style Ultra Boss where you absolutely have to have a coordinated party of three players to win. It's fun to mess around with, but frankly it should be removed from everything other than Merged Akriloth, which basically exists as a herald for that battle style. Remove it from Akriloth and the Mummragon.

quote:

As exciting as new content is, that obviously takes time to develop/release. Perhaps permanently re-releasing older "lost" or "rare" content from time to time might help lighten the workload slightly? The idea being that if it already exists somewhere in the DF data archives, it would hopefully be easy enough to add it back in and not take a lot of precious dev-time to implement.

Agreed. I would love to be able to play with the retro versions of modern classes before their revamps just to fool around and see how the game used to be before all the changes. It would be a little slice of nostalgia, and we have the entire Libraseum for exactly this purpose. It could also be an Old Skills/New Skills option on the class vendors. However, it sounds like a very easy way to double the existing amount of story classes and give players silly things to try out while waiting between releases. Obviously, some things like OG Spider Venom need to be addressed in light of the Malefic Binding nerf, but that's another matter. The old rare F13 wars coming back would be really nice too, and I personally have always hoped for a rerun of the EbilCorp war, just because this shop has such great items.

quote:

Just off the top of my head, the three Ballyhoo "Shorts" from August '09 could go in the Falconreach Theater

Er...

quote:

On the subject of holidays, the missing 2012/2015 Grenwog quests would fit nicely in the Lucky Day book. Or maybe they could be given to Orion in Mootropolis, who doesn't have much purpose unless Grenwog content is accessible?

Yeah, Orion in Mootopolis should allow you to access these old quests. Founder's Gauntlet would be nice too.

Post #: 12

Page: [1]

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