"This game might be a bit too much like WoW. Even the looting is the same!"
Uh, yeah. There are only so many ways to get loot from a dead guy into your backpack.
Those were the british fops I spoke of, specifically the one that sounds the most nasally, like he's talking out his fucking nose.
I'm SO GLAD someone else can't stand the Yoggscast. They are not only pretty bad at WoW but they have bad opinions nearly 100% of the time and everything they say makes me want to shoryuken a puppy.
I'm a little lost about the zones in Rift: is it totally open, sans dungeons? It's not like AoC or Warhammer where when I go into a new zone I have to see a loading screen?
From what someone said (last page I think) the world is open, no loading screens except for instances and warfronts (battlegrounds). A friend of mine was really annoyed by that in both Aion and WAR. I didn't mind really, but I can see how that might break the immersion a bit.
Those beta 5 preview tidbits are really sweet, very nice to see Public Grouping just like that from nowhere after a lot of players requested it. I like it that the devs are actually listening to the players.
Your guildy clearly didn't play far in Aion. To the best of our knowledge, you never run out of quests (although we've only gotten up to 27) which was the bad part of Aion. The betas will supposedly go up to 42 (8 levels below cap), so we should get a very good hold on how 'grindy' it is. There aren't that many super inventive quests like WoW, but there are a few ones like 'shoot mans with cannon' and the second zone, at least on the defiant side, held a pretty neat 'epic' zone quest.
Yeah you didn't get far enough into Aion. Once you got into the 40s you hit a brick wall. at least at launch - no idea what its like now.
Your guildy clearly didn't play far in Aion. To the best of our knowledge, you never run out of quests (although we've only gotten up to 27) which was the bad part of Aion. The betas will supposedly go up to 42 (8 levels below cap), so we should get a very good hold on how 'grindy' it is. There aren't that many super inventive quests like WoW, but there are a few ones like 'shoot mans with cannon' and the second zone, at least on the defiant side, held a pretty neat 'epic' zone quest.
Yeah you didn't get far enough into Aion. Once you got into the 40s you hit a brick wall. at least at launch - no idea what its like now.
Now you have quests all the way up, but that's only because they added a bunch of repeatable quests. So instead of no quests, you just do the same one 10, 15, or (literally) one hundred times. I mean, granted, it's better than it was at launch, by a LONG SHOT, but it's still pretty bad.
Yeah you didn't get far enough into Aion. Once you got into the 40s you hit a brick wall. at least at launch - no idea what its like now.
I...I think I was agreeing with you? I think I got to the mid 30s and after a while I just kind of ran out of quests. To be fair, I could of just screwed up and missed where I was supposed to go and I did play a bit after the release.
-edit- Ah, yeah, I can see how my wording could of been off. I was saying he didn't get far because the grind in Rift (finishing quests) isn't at all like the grind in Aion (literal grinding of mobs).
And honestly, -everything- in an MMO can be pointed at and called a grind. "I don't like traveling, it's a grind!" Hence... WoW, "I don't like picking plants, it's a grind!,"
Calling something a grind is more or less saying you just don't like doing it.
And honestly, -everything- in an MMO can be pointed at and called a grind. "I don't like traveling, it's a grind!" Hence... WoW, "I don't like picking plants, it's a grind!,"
Calling something a grind is more or less saying you just don't like doing it.
I dunno. I mean I am sure you speak for vast, huge swaths of the MMO population, but grinding is actually something I enjoy under certain circumstances.
When you say "it's pretty grindy" my response isn't "how long" it's "what kind?"
Well it's how I've seem most people consider the term 'grind' in my experience. Some people enjoy killing things over and over to get new shinies, others don't.
Some people think these are a great idea, and others are less than thrilled due to negative experiences with related-sounding mechanics in other games that provide E-Sport style PvP, which we have intentionally not included and do not have plans to. Other games have their issues to design for, and we have ours. The two are definitely different.
I've been wondering this a lot since I started looking into rift, for those who have been playing so far through the beta, how big is PvP in this game, and is it decent? From what I gather, it's something they're designing for, but not something they are basing the game upon?
Some people think these are a great idea, and others are less than thrilled due to negative experiences with related-sounding mechanics in other games that provide E-Sport style PvP, which we have intentionally not included and do not have plans to. Other games have their issues to design for, and we have ours. The two are definitely different.
I've been wondering this a lot since I started looking into rift, for those who have been playing so far through the beta, how big is PvP in this game, and is it decent? From what I gather, it's something they're designing for, but not something they are basing the game upon?
There are two types of PvP that tend to be the most popular: (1) The WoW Arena model, small group v. small group in a highly structured setting, and (2) the full-loot, conquerable territory, destroying/stealing other people's stuff model a la EVE, UO, or SB.
RIFT's PvP is neither of these, and I believe that this is a good thing. My impression is that Trion is going for Warfronts as their instanced, easily accessible PvP option, and that they are using the rift/wardstone system as their open world PvP option. This latter option is why I'm most interested in RIFT's PvP - if they can pull off dynamic PvP encounters that are anything like their dynamic PvE encounters, with battles raging across a map and multiple objectives to fight over, I will be too happy for words. Beta 5 will be our first chance to see how this might turn out.
RIFT's PvP is neither of these, and I believe that this is a good thing. My impression is that Trion is going for Warfronts as their instanced, easily accessible PvP option, and that they are using the rift/wardstone system as their open world PvP option. This latter option is why I'm most interested in RIFT's PvP - if they can pull off dynamic PvP encounters that are anything like their dynamic PvE encounters, with battles raging across a map and multiple objectives to fight over, I will be too happy for words. Beta 5 will be our first chance to see how this might turn out.
Warfronts I assume like WAR's scenarios, or WoW's BGs?
And, the real question, what is the rift/wardstone system? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, but I'm really having trouble finding all this information, and I'm trying to get a mental handle on what to expect.
It seems that there will be battlegrounds or "Warfronts" which you queue for. However the objectives can be diffrent, in one apparently you have to deal with PvE things to win the match.
Also I have the sneaking suspicion that players will be able to take over outposts in higher level sounds. You know how an Invasion from a rift can take over a small questing outpost? I wouldn't be surprised if they had a similar thing for PvP.
On top of all this, they actually have a HILARIOUS way to deal with people getting ganked by higher leveled people. A bunch of 20's can gang up on a Level 50, which means he's fucked, and they'll all get awesome loot off his corpse while he gains nothing for killing them.
Warfronts I assume like WAR's scenarios, or WoW's BGs?
And, the real question, what is the rift/wardstone system? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, but I'm really having trouble finding all this information, and I'm trying to get a mental handle on what to expect.
Wardstones are these.. well, stones within friendly camps. When an invasion event happens in a zone, the ultamite goal for the marauding NPCs is to slaughter everyone in that camp, and then destroy your wardstone to set up their own.
Warfronts I assume like WAR's scenarios, or WoW's BGs?
And, the real question, what is the rift/wardstone system? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, but I'm really having trouble finding all this information, and I'm trying to get a mental handle on what to expect.
Like WoW's BGs. Check the OP for a description of massive zone-wide rift events. Wardstones are scattered around the map, usually at towns or quest hubs, and get taken over by invasions sent out from rifts.
Warfronts I assume like WAR's scenarios, or WoW's BGs?
With twists, yes. For example, one of them is a King of the Hill type game where holding an object will give your team points...but slowly kill the person holding it. And they get more points for sitting in the area of the map with little cover. They also have a capture-and-hold-the-points style one where one point gives more points than others, but is much harder to defend. They've also said they're adding in a huge (20 v 20) PvE/PvP warfront and your typical CTF style one as well.
And, the real question, what is the rift/wardstone system? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, but I'm really having trouble finding all this information, and I'm trying to get a mental handle on what to expect.
It's fine! There can be a lot to take in. Rifts are the way the numerous planes attempt to invade Telarra. You run up to an unopened Rift, use an ability you get from one of the first quests, and essentially 'pop' it into an active Rift. That Rift will then spawn 3 waves of enemies that scale based off of the level of the Rift (preset before you open it up) and how many players are there (scales with each wave). The third wave will be a boss. The fourth and fifth wave are 'bonus' waves; if you fail them, the Rift closes and you get standard rewards, but if you beat them within a time limit you can get very good rewards that can be turned into vendors to get level-appropriate gear and consumables. If you leave a Rift alone it will spawn invasions, essentially roaming groups of elites that will attempt to destroy each town's Wardstone and place their own. A Wardstone gives every friendly player in the area a buff to help ward off invasions, so once it's down the town is essentially out of luck. Once the invasions place up their own hub thing in place of the Wardstone, they'll stick around to defend it and another invasion will pop up from the hub and continue to roam the land. You, however, can summon in friendly invasions to help counter them or just blow up the hub, stopping the invasion chain from happening.
In terms of world PvP, Trion plans on Rift's becoming giant PvP hotspots. They give such good XP/Rewards to the side that defeats them that you'll want to fight over the right to close each and every rift. As for the Wardstones, the podcast posted a page back talks about how there will be PvP specific Wardstones that, when destroyed by the enemy, looted, and the piece of looted Wardstone brought back to somewhere (they didn't elaborate), you would get some large rewards.
Warfronts I assume like WAR's scenarios, or WoW's BGs?
And, the real question, what is the rift/wardstone system? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, but I'm really having trouble finding all this information, and I'm trying to get a mental handle on what to expect.
Like WoW's BGs. Check the OP for a description of massive zone-wide rift events. Wardstones are scattered around the map, usually at towns or quest hubs, and get taken over by invasions sent out from rifts.
I don't agree with the WoW BGs. The have a mix between WoW and Warhammer.
If you look at the first one Black Garden (10v10) you will find out it looks way more then Mourkain Temple as Warsong.
And I really like that the fixed the Warhammer error because now if you fight right in the center you will get a lot more points to finish this map. So if you turtle, you will get punished with a lot less points.
Codex (15v15) is more like Arathi but the layout has at last more choke points. One flag is right between 2 hills so you can hit the players down there and on the other side of the map you have only a small entrance point over a bridge.
Any idea if the game supports multiple cores? I'd hope being that it's "designed HD from the ground up" also means it takes advantages of newer tech, but you never know with games these days.
Granted, it's hard to really know what you're doing without any real in-game context, but it can be fun to find builds that at least appear to synergize well.
It's also nice to see that when picking your first soul, it gives recommendations as to what other souls might compliment that soul well. Sure, you can go in any direction you want, but it at least gives new players some (likely) much-needed guidance.
I'd prefer less points in Bard and more in Riftstalker, especially since you're so close to the defer death/memory teleport abilities. Here's how I was planning my build:
Only one comment. If you ever do PvP in Black Garden pickup Sprint from your bladedancer Soul.
Shadow Shift + Anthem of Competence + Sprint and you will be faster then anyone else for a long time.
Think about it, a tank can catch the "shard" in the center and hold it. :twisted:
Aren't extremely powerful single cores the 'newer' tech these days?
Plus, if what I've seen is true RIFT does most of its processing server-side, which is honestly something I've never seen before.
If you mean it handles a lot of the data server side, that's every MMO, there's no way it does the "processing" server side, if it did that would be considerably slower than using your own processor under all circumstances
I must say Rift sure does seem to be optimized pretty well. Seems like an MMO being able to run on a toaster is more a measure of future success than anything
Aren't extremely powerful single cores the 'newer' tech these days?
Plus, if what I've seen is true RIFT does most of its processing server-side, which is honestly something I've never seen before.
If you mean it handles a lot of the data server side, that's every MMO, there's no way it does the "processing" server side, if it did that would be considerably slower than using your own processor under all circumstances
I must say Rift sure does seem to be optimized pretty well. Seems like an MMO being able to run on a toaster is more a measure of future success than anything
Here's the thing, I've seen quite noticeable proof of the game handling massive amounts of people on the screen at once, with an average at best computer running it. Whether it's the game being supremely optimized, or some kind of processing magic they do, I don't know.
Aren't extremely powerful single cores the 'newer' tech these days?
Plus, if what I've seen is true RIFT does most of its processing server-side, which is honestly something I've never seen before.
Admittedly I haven't kept up with processor tech as much in recent years as I had before. I have an i7. That's a multicore processor, no?
I -think- that's a single core.
Maybe.
I don't know
the I7 is the fastest line of quad cores out right now, although they vary wildly even the slowest of them makes a playstation 3 look like a gameboy color
Aren't extremely powerful single cores the 'newer' tech these days?
Plus, if what I've seen is true RIFT does most of its processing server-side, which is honestly something I've never seen before.
Admittedly I haven't kept up with processor tech as much in recent years as I had before. I have an i7. That's a multicore processor, no?
I -think- that's a single core.
Maybe.
I don't know
the I7 is the fastest line of quad cores out right now, although they vary wildly even the slowest of them makes a playstation 3 look like a gameboy color
I thought so. Aren't they technically actually 4 dual-cores or some shit?
Hi, everyone -- Since the beta NDA is officially off, we wanted to post this here where those who couldn't make it to this beta would get a chance to see what we've been up to as well. Enjoy!
Beta 5 Preview - It's been a busy couple weeks!
We’ve tried to take as much advantage of the relative calm between Beta 4 and Beta 5 as we possibly could. Here are some of the highlights to look forward to in Beta 5 tomorrow. We'd like to detail a number of them and also shed some light on a few things for Beta 6 and beyond.
New For Beta 5
We're expecting Beta 5 to be at least twice as big as beta 4! By the end of Beta 4, we were running a total of 18 servers. 8 in our Europe datacenter and 10 in the US. This time we're opening up with 16 in each region, for a total of 32 servers, all with higher population caps, more than doubling the number of people who can be online at once.
If you get caught in too long of a queue during the middle of beta, know that we'll be keeping an eye out to see if we need to open even more.
Public Grouping. This was a big one for us -- just about the single most requested item -- and we're really happy to have it in game for you to try out already.
First, as you're wandering around the world and target people, if they're solo or ingroups/raids that are willing to accept new public members, you'll see a new button in the target frame that lets you join their group or merge your group into theirs if it fits.
rift_b5_update_target_frame.jpg
Second, when you walk into an area where there's an event occurring (or an event like an invasion walks up to you), if there are other friendly players in the area who are open to grouping, you'll see a button up on the top of the screen that lets you join the nearest Public Group.
rift_b5_update_join_button.png
Note that if your group merges and gets automatically upgraded into a Raid, you shouldn't take a huge XP penalty as with most games. Since Raiding is a valid way to play through the levelling up experience in Rift, most notably in mass zone events, we want to ensure that XP gains there are meaningful and fun.
Planar Foci and Currencies. An entire new character sheet awaits! Foci weren't as clear as they could be and Planar Currencies were taking up too much inventory space. The stats display was a little crowded at times as well. We've got a new version of the character sheet in place the addresses many of the issues people had been commenting on. Expect continued polish and functionality here in the future, and we hope you enjoy the inventory space reclamation in the meanwhile.
In terms of currencies, to make the whole system make more sense in general, the older per-zone token currencies are now various tiers of Sourcestone, and the common event tokens are now a single currency called Planarite. Expect to see more uses for these over time, including expansions of wardstone reinforcement and other world offense/defense metagame elements.
Rogue Energy. Rogue energy regeneration got a rework this update, and it definitely does feel a lot better. Give it a crack and let us know if you like the new responsiveness and lack of energy starvation!
Tab Targeting / Target Nearest. Tab targeting got a significant usability upgrade, and Target Nearest Friendly / Target Nearest Enemy are now bindable functions with F6 and F7.
Key Bindings. "How do I bind hotkeys?!" If you've been in beta, you've seen this question. A lot.
Our method of keybinding hotbars where you just mouse over the hotbar then press the letter was confusing a lot of people. It was the most asked "how do I" question throughout the beta so far. Our original way is still there, but the old-school method of listing out each keybind in the keybinds window has been added as well.
Discoveries and Firsts. As items, creatures and achievements get discovered for the first time, the game now keeps track of how many you’ve been the first to find. The messages around this are going to be a bit too frequent through the opening of beta, but will calm down rapidly as elements in the world are Discovered. It’s a system that we’re still tuning, and your feedback is definitely appreciated.
Ranged Weapon Sounds. We've had comments in the past on the sounds of these not being meaty enough. We've been taking those to heart, and we agree. We’ve started to improve some of these sounds and will continue to do so throughout the life of the game. See if you can pick out the new ones, and let us know what you think!
PvP Auto Flag. This is now an option available under Settings -> Interface -> Combat. You can disable it if you wish to not be automatically flagged while in PvE areas/servers.
Invasion Improvements. Invasions as a whole got some significant love this update. Expect a lot more variance in their size, and much better adaptability to the sizes of defending forces. (Which means you'll be a lot less likely to see a rift send out three waves of elite packs to deal with a relatively undefended area. They’re not supposed to be Global Steamrollers.)
On their Leashing and Social Aggro: Invasions were previously an all-or-nothing kind of experience. With larger numbers of players getting involved, they would leash and reset the whole invasion too frequently, and it was an item we got a lot of feedback on. We've addressed this in Beta 5. If you can peel one off while the others are distracted, more power to you!
New Visible Stats. Along with the new character sheet, you're going to see two stats that were previously not being displayed: Toughness and Valor.
Toughness is a PvE Tanking stat. Its purpose is provide a defensive upgrade path in upper tiers of PvE content, and is one more way to ensure that tanks can progress in PvE without being broken-overpowered in PvP due to their PvE gear. (PvE gear is still very useful, just not overpowering.)
Just like high end casters need Focus and physical DPS need some amount of Hit, high end tanks need Toughness to deal with more difficult monsters. All that said, Toughness, Focus and Hit make up a small amount of the overall stat distribution that you’ll see on your PvE items.
Valor is a PvP damage reduction stat. It's been in the game for quite some time and is now showing up on the new character sheet and in the tooltips for items that provide it.
Our game supports both PvP and PvE progression. A stat like Valor gives us an important tool to use in tuning the high end of those progressions.
NPCs and Players are not balanced identically, nor should they be. The pace of play is very different between the two styles. Fun PvE and fun PvP are generally two very different things. Nerfing PvE abilities for the sake of PvP, as other games have found themselves forced to do, is something that we're trying to avoid wherever possible,
In providing a good PvP progression, we need to ensure that we can provide good rewards, without forcing people to play a part of the game they might not care to.
PvE gear remains competitive in PvP, and PvP gear remains competitive in PvE. It just won't be a trump card in the opposite style of play. You shouldn't expect to need to "grind" two full sets of gear just to have fun.
A stat like Valor is one more tool we can use to ensure that, for instance, the ideal PvP rewards do not become the de-facto best PvE Tanking rewards in the game. (Without Valor, significant PvP survivability also becomes PvE survivability…and, conversely, the best PvE DPS loot would become the de-facto best PvP DPS loot). We’d effectively be forcing people to gear up one way just to succeed at the other, since NPCs are balanced much differently than players.
Some people think these are a great idea, and others are less than thrilled due to negative experiences with related-sounding mechanics in other games that provide E-Sport style PvP, which we have intentionally not included and do not have plans to. Other games have their issues to design for, and we have ours. The two are definitely different.
Q: Am I going to have to "grind" two sets of gear the entire time?
A: No. Gear from each kind of play is competitive in the other side. It's just not overpowering to the other side. It remains a great head start. We expect that the highest end PvP and PvE'ers will choose to care, but the majority won't find that its existence impacts their gameplay in a negative way, since we are not balancing the game around any kind of E-Sport style Arenas, as other games have.
Q: Why can't you balance everything around Health?
A: Players are infinitely smarter than creatures, and abilities are used in both PvE and PvP. Having PvP damage reduction be purely about health would create a situation where almost necessitate PvE tanks to have to gear up via PvP. We are primarily trying to ensure that people who choose to only take part in one style of play aren't "forced" to take part in the other.
We like to think that we've so far been pretty good at reacting once things have proven to work or not work in Rift. As with any other mechanic in the game, we'll be keeping an eye on it. If it's making the game not fun, it will be addressed.
Here's what's on deck for future Betas:
Activated Racial Abilities. We know that some of them are overpowered and bring the whole concept out of whack. Our original idea was: "let's make sure these things are really fun." In our doing this, they've almost turned into a powergamer IQ test. It's not good for anyone if we effectively lock a race to a given play style. (e.g. all Tanks must be one race and all DPS must be another, or you're Doing It Wrong). Expect updates to the racials following this beta.
Master Loot. Yes, it's coming! Groups and raids will be able to have a Master Looter who's in charge of assigning out loot.
Collections merge into the new Character Sheet. "Where are my mounts? Where are my titles?" Now that we've designed a character sheet that can fit them in a way that looks good and is more usable, collections will make their way into it as well.
War Powers. We have a lot of consumable items in the game that are focused on the idea of the war between the planes and the rifts and the land-control meta game. Expect a special place for them in the Abilities tab and a resource to power them soon. Time to get them out of your inventory, provide a better sense of discovering them, and get them into a place where they make a whole lot more sense. Expect more details here in the future.
We're looking forward to this largest Beta we've ever run. While there will definitely be some bumps, we'll be right there with you the entire time to make sure everything goes as well as it possibly can.
Posts
From what someone said (last page I think) the world is open, no loading screens except for instances and warfronts (battlegrounds). A friend of mine was really annoyed by that in both Aion and WAR. I didn't mind really, but I can see how that might break the immersion a bit.
No sweat man. Just playing.
I wish I had one of these to pass around but I got my key from the Zam give away and it was one use.
Edit: Zam claims to still have keys. http://www.zam.com/giveaways/rift.html.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
OK, that code is out of uses. Anyone have one I can use?
E: Got a key!
http://www.zam.com/giveaways/rift.html Apparently ZAM still has VIP keys?
Yeah you didn't get far enough into Aion. Once you got into the 40s you hit a brick wall. at least at launch - no idea what its like now.
Empire - Veela Server
Now you have quests all the way up, but that's only because they added a bunch of repeatable quests. So instead of no quests, you just do the same one 10, 15, or (literally) one hundred times. I mean, granted, it's better than it was at launch, by a LONG SHOT, but it's still pretty bad.
I...I think I was agreeing with you? I think I got to the mid 30s and after a while I just kind of ran out of quests. To be fair, I could of just screwed up and missed where I was supposed to go and I did play a bit after the release.
-edit- Ah, yeah, I can see how my wording could of been off. I was saying he didn't get far because the grind in Rift (finishing quests) isn't at all like the grind in Aion (literal grinding of mobs).
Calling something a grind is more or less saying you just don't like doing it.
I dunno. I mean I am sure you speak for vast, huge swaths of the MMO population, but grinding is actually something I enjoy under certain circumstances.
When you say "it's pretty grindy" my response isn't "how long" it's "what kind?"
I've been wondering this a lot since I started looking into rift, for those who have been playing so far through the beta, how big is PvP in this game, and is it decent? From what I gather, it's something they're designing for, but not something they are basing the game upon?
DLHH-Q3Y3-7DCE-N2PM-CQ3C
There are two types of PvP that tend to be the most popular: (1) The WoW Arena model, small group v. small group in a highly structured setting, and (2) the full-loot, conquerable territory, destroying/stealing other people's stuff model a la EVE, UO, or SB.
RIFT's PvP is neither of these, and I believe that this is a good thing. My impression is that Trion is going for Warfronts as their instanced, easily accessible PvP option, and that they are using the rift/wardstone system as their open world PvP option. This latter option is why I'm most interested in RIFT's PvP - if they can pull off dynamic PvP encounters that are anything like their dynamic PvE encounters, with battles raging across a map and multiple objectives to fight over, I will be too happy for words. Beta 5 will be our first chance to see how this might turn out.
Warfronts I assume like WAR's scenarios, or WoW's BGs?
And, the real question, what is the rift/wardstone system? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, but I'm really having trouble finding all this information, and I'm trying to get a mental handle on what to expect.
Also I have the sneaking suspicion that players will be able to take over outposts in higher level sounds. You know how an Invasion from a rift can take over a small questing outpost? I wouldn't be surprised if they had a similar thing for PvP.
On top of all this, they actually have a HILARIOUS way to deal with people getting ganked by higher leveled people. A bunch of 20's can gang up on a Level 50, which means he's fucked, and they'll all get awesome loot off his corpse while he gains nothing for killing them.
Wardstones are these.. well, stones within friendly camps. When an invasion event happens in a zone, the ultamite goal for the marauding NPCs is to slaughter everyone in that camp, and then destroy your wardstone to set up their own.
Like WoW's BGs. Check the OP for a description of massive zone-wide rift events. Wardstones are scattered around the map, usually at towns or quest hubs, and get taken over by invasions sent out from rifts.
With twists, yes. For example, one of them is a King of the Hill type game where holding an object will give your team points...but slowly kill the person holding it. And they get more points for sitting in the area of the map with little cover. They also have a capture-and-hold-the-points style one where one point gives more points than others, but is much harder to defend. They've also said they're adding in a huge (20 v 20) PvE/PvP warfront and your typical CTF style one as well.
It's fine! There can be a lot to take in. Rifts are the way the numerous planes attempt to invade Telarra. You run up to an unopened Rift, use an ability you get from one of the first quests, and essentially 'pop' it into an active Rift. That Rift will then spawn 3 waves of enemies that scale based off of the level of the Rift (preset before you open it up) and how many players are there (scales with each wave). The third wave will be a boss. The fourth and fifth wave are 'bonus' waves; if you fail them, the Rift closes and you get standard rewards, but if you beat them within a time limit you can get very good rewards that can be turned into vendors to get level-appropriate gear and consumables. If you leave a Rift alone it will spawn invasions, essentially roaming groups of elites that will attempt to destroy each town's Wardstone and place their own. A Wardstone gives every friendly player in the area a buff to help ward off invasions, so once it's down the town is essentially out of luck. Once the invasions place up their own hub thing in place of the Wardstone, they'll stick around to defend it and another invasion will pop up from the hub and continue to roam the land. You, however, can summon in friendly invasions to help counter them or just blow up the hub, stopping the invasion chain from happening.
In terms of world PvP, Trion plans on Rift's becoming giant PvP hotspots. They give such good XP/Rewards to the side that defeats them that you'll want to fight over the right to close each and every rift. As for the Wardstones, the podcast posted a page back talks about how there will be PvP specific Wardstones that, when destroyed by the enemy, looted, and the piece of looted Wardstone brought back to somewhere (they didn't elaborate), you would get some large rewards.
ALSO! I fiddled with a Tanky Riftstalker build: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MVpc.xcbV0c.xGtht0co0z.thzVc
Thoughts?
I don't agree with the WoW BGs. The have a mix between WoW and Warhammer.
If you look at the first one Black Garden (10v10) you will find out it looks way more then Mourkain Temple as Warsong.
And I really like that the fixed the Warhammer error because now if you fight right in the center you will get a lot more points to finish this map. So if you turtle, you will get punished with a lot less points.
Codex (15v15) is more like Arathi but the layout has at last more choke points. One flag is right between 2 hills so you can hit the players down there and on the other side of the map you have only a small entrance point over a bridge.
I like them.
The next PvP zone tomorrow will be a PvPvE map.
If you did not play before read this here http://www.curse.com/blogs/rift-news/archive/2011/01/12/impressions-of-rift-beta-4.aspx
Also, if you want to tool around with the different trees, just go here: http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html
Granted, it's hard to really know what you're doing without any real in-game context, but it can be fun to find builds that at least appear to synergize well.
It's also nice to see that when picking your first soul, it gives recommendations as to what other souls might compliment that soul well. Sure, you can go in any direction you want, but it at least gives new players some (likely) much-needed guidance.
Plus, if what I've seen is true RIFT does most of its processing server-side, which is honestly something I've never seen before.
You can even run the client, but the server list will be empty.
I'd prefer less points in Bard and more in Riftstalker, especially since you're so close to the defer death/memory teleport abilities. Here's how I was planning my build:
http://rift.zam.com/en/stc.html?t=0MVpc.xMdV0cM.xGthtqcR0z.xh
Only one comment. If you ever do PvP in Black Garden pickup Sprint from your bladedancer Soul.
Shadow Shift + Anthem of Competence + Sprint and you will be faster then anyone else for a long time.
Think about it, a tank can catch the "shard" in the center and hold it. :twisted:
Admittedly I haven't kept up with processor tech as much in recent years as I had before. I have an i7. That's a multicore processor, no?
Well, crap. When I try to log in it says "You are not authorized to play this game" (error #2002)
If you mean it handles a lot of the data server side, that's every MMO, there's no way it does the "processing" server side, if it did that would be considerably slower than using your own processor under all circumstances
I must say Rift sure does seem to be optimized pretty well. Seems like an MMO being able to run on a toaster is more a measure of future success than anything
have you been invited via email into the event yet?
I -think- that's a single core.
Maybe.
I don't know
Here's the thing, I've seen quite noticeable proof of the game handling massive amounts of people on the screen at once, with an average at best computer running it. Whether it's the game being supremely optimized, or some kind of processing magic they do, I don't know.
I guess not? I just entered in a VIP code a few minutes ago.
the I7 is the fastest line of quad cores out right now, although they vary wildly even the slowest of them makes a playstation 3 look like a gameboy color
I thought so. Aren't they technically actually 4 dual-cores or some shit?