I see some people talking about PvE Defiant, how many are in the PvP Defiant boat (besides me!)?
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cptruggedI think it has something to do with free will.Registered Userregular
edited February 2011
My wife and I have really enjoying this game. It is very similar to wow. But, in all honesty, I've been saying for years that what someone needs to do is make a game that has the features that everyone likes from wow and make a different setting and have updated graphics. I think this was a good move on thier part.
I have been playing a Reaver/Warlard/Void Knight tank to pair with my wife's rogue. And it is good stuff. the reaver's debuff tanking is just great and pairs well with a quick damage dealer.
My Chloro that I've been playing on the side is also awesome. I love the healing aspect. I just wish I had the old clique (click healing mods) from wow. I just got to used to not having to switch targets and just clicking on portraits.
Wasn't suggesting it was the same tone you had in your bug/suggestion reports =D. I will admit I didn't play much of Tabula Rasa, only was in the beta near the end. Never saw an invasion of a base honestly, was a shame that the game was shut down so quickly I really liked the different setting.
But back to Rift: Show of hands, who else here has pre-ordered the Digital Collector's Edition?
\o I did. I figured what the hell, it's the same price as a brand new 360 game and I know I've pissed away full price on more than one of those games.
Rift is missing a lot of key playability features and failing to capitalize on using a brand new game to discard pointless/obnoxious MMO conventions.
Off the top of my head from playing 1-19 in the recent beta (warning, pedantry):
Why do I have to train my skills every X level? Why do skill trainers even exist? You already award skills when talents are spent, why don't you scale them with player level?
Similarly with trade skills, why are they capped at blocks of 75? Why do I have to hit the skill cap to train the next block instead of 2/3 of the way (75/75 instead of 50/75)? Why do I have to train them at all past the initial choosing? Or spend ridiculous amounts of time to smelt bars or tan hides or do anything like that? Your response here might be "so that you can gain mining/butchery skillups from that so you don't have to mine as much/skin as much" to which the obvious reply is "reduce the skill curve to adjust for that."
Not enough is communicated to the player about enemy/boss abilities. I shouldn't have to guess at how abilities function based on their (awkward RP) spell name on the cast bar or worse, having to pore through a combat log. Maybe this is different in higher level dungeons? Regardless, it makes every non-boss (and most boss) mob seem like a generic punching bag. This is exacerbated by the lack of distinct visuals on spells. Perhaps it was my medium graphics settings?
If I go into an instance and fail, how do I know what the breaking point was? Is my DPS not good enough? Is the tank doing something wrong? Is the healer missing something? You get zero feedback in any of these areas.
Why doesn't worthless grey trash loot autosold when I open a vendor? Why do I have to play a whack-a-mole avoid-stuff-I-actually-need minigame every time I visit one? If this is intentional, why isn't item quality highlighted more clearly without having to hover over it?
Why don't pre-max level battlegrounds scale your stats to the maximum level of that group? This makes battlegrounds
There are more, but I'm tired and it's been a few days since I played. I'm sure if I had played a bit longer and more recently I would have many more things I could easily rattle off. These things, along with poor animations and all the other smaller issues and nuances and quirks and engine issues themselves aren't reasons to not buy the game. No one writes down "I had to alt tab for 2 minutes while I smelted 80 tin bars" in their cancellation box. But this speaks to Trion's approach to game design and what we have to look forward to. There are some novel ideas and interesting potential in some of what Trion is doing, but the overarching design simply feels like WoW's PvE mashed with Warhammer's PvP with a sprinkle of neato ideas some devs had. The end result is an unpolished, unfinished product (I read in the thread earlier that raid frames aren't even done?) that's less than a month from launch.
I've followed almost every MMO launch since Everquest. I've read a lot of hopes and assurances and promises that things can or will be fixed by [launch/month from launch/x time from launch] but the fact is that the product you're seeing now is going to be, minus a handful of additions and tweaks, the product that early adopters see for the first two months. Those first two months are hugely important in defining the product's future. AoC (just as an example) launched with a super neat single-playeresque 1-20 experience and then collapsed as you approached the clearly unfinished endgame. This combined with tragically unbalanced classes and gameplay that quickly grew tired led to a massive drop in playerbase almost immediately after launch. Great, you can sell a lot of boxes and maybe eek out some profit with an acceptable amount of subscriptions, but is it a good game? Will it thrive long enough to become one? Will people care enough to stick around and see? Or will you have to lay off 70% of your staff.
As MMOs go, Rift is probably the best-quality-at-launch EQ-style MMO I've seen since WoW. This has a lot to do with how much they simply ape directly from WoW (many things to their detriment, sadly.) But that's not enough. I can see this game gaining a healthy enough playerbase to be profitable and a good amount of people who are happy with the product as it is (WoW-but-not-WoW), which is great and I'm happy for all of you that will enjoy it and are looking forward to it. I just wish they had done something more.
My Chloro that I've been playing on the side is also awesome. I love the healing aspect. I just wish I had the old clique (click healing mods) from wow. I just got to used to not having to switch targets and just clicking on portraits.
Turn on "Show Target of Target" and "Cast on Target of Target"
This will, when you have a mob targetted, cast your damaging spells on the monster and your heals on the monster's target.
All of your AoE healing needs should be met with Lifegiving Veil and Nourish.
Not enough is communicated to the player about enemy/boss abilities. I shouldn't have to guess at how abilities function based on their (awkward RP) spell name on the cast bar or worse, having to pore through a combat log. Maybe this is different in higher level dungeons? Regardless, it makes every non-boss (and most boss) mob seem like a generic punching bag. This is exacerbated by the lack of distinct visuals on spells. Perhaps it was my medium graphics settings?
If I go into an instance and fail, how do I know what the breaking point was? Is my DPS not good enough? Is the tank doing something wrong? Is the healer missing something? You get zero feedback in any of these areas.
Yeah, these are the big issues for me. The combat is VERY obfuscated, you cannot really tell what is going on simply by looking at it like you can in WoW (the animation complaints further back in the thread are part of this too). Debuffs are terrible in this regard too, I can cleanse poison/disease? Oh, that'd be cool if I had any fucking clue which debuffs were poisons and diseases.
There are a lot of very good things with rift, and a lot of things that're easy to point out and complain about. My number one annoyance with being a rogue was that even with the multitude of debuffs I could apply, I would randomly have them kicked off with no idea why. It wasn't until I realized "Oh, someone else is applying one that I can't see, which is overwriting mine and removing it" that I actually noticed that I couldn't see anyone elses debuffs on the mob. I spent a few minutes looking through options, but I never found a way to see what buffs or debuffs are on a mob that wern't applied by myself. I had no idea if someone else would debuff the mob so I knew when to attack or anything like that. I knew that some classes had buff removal abilities, but never actually saw when buffs were applied to targets. Trying to focus on my energy, combo points, movement, and targeting made it hard to figure out when a target in PVP had a shield, or something else on them and I wasn't actually doing as much damage as I should be.
CorriganX on
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Well there do exist combat parses for the game, you type /combatlog while in the game and it does the rest. Mind you this is after-the-fact stuff, generally. Not on the fly.
Honestly I kind of feel refreshed not knowing a lot of this stuff. Is this thing dying nice and quick? Okay that's good, does Target-of-Target show it hitting me since I'm the tank? Yep it does, we're good.
Healer got mana? Not getting hit?
Good.
Also Corrigan I'm almost 100% certain there is indeed an option to show only your own debuffs on a target... or, hm... was it only your own buffs on yourself? I'll be sure to put a suggestion in for that then, it'd be a good idea.
However simply asking someone in the group "Hey does one of your things do *insert status effect*" Course that's not gonna work well in a random rifty raid.
As someone who doesnt play MMOs, and who just tried out, this past week, both RIFT and WoW for the first time ever, I have to say: RIFT beats WoW by a mile.
The player characters are beautiful.
-WoW was freaking ugly.
The art direction is beautiful and also awesome (and I mean this literally, as in awe-inspiring). Seeing a rift open up for the first time in front of me and watching it change the landscape was incredible.
-WoW was, again, ugly as sin. Oh, except the opening cinematic with the dragon. That was pretty!
The quests don't make me feel like hammering a nail through my dick.
-I played WoW for about 5 hours, and got a bunch of kill x to gather y missions. Which, ok, being level 19 in RIFT I've hit also. But maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe it IS RIFT, but I seem to get the y's a hell of a lot more often than I did in WoW.
The class structure is refreshing and I cant wait to get more play time and try out new classes. Made perfect sense when I started playing.
-I still have no clue how I was supposed to get new skills or make them better in WoW.
So basically, to a newcomer to the mamorpagorg genre, I'm super excited to play more. Preordered last night!
I noticed my +10 Endurance buff was being overwritten by a lower level clerics +5 Endurance buff when I entered a warfront once.
This obviously should not be the case, but I'll chalk it up to minor things that just need to be reported and fixed around the launch date. I mean, it's still in BETA. It's so polished that people forget it's a beta phase and also hasn't officially launched with whatever large patch will be available at that time.
A lot of complaints people have aren't really deal-breakers, just inconveniences that will probably (hopefully) be addressed within the first month or so of the game's release.
I'm honestly just glad that this game didn't have a release date of say, June 2011, and the company (or it's investors or daddy company) didn't want want to rush it out now like DCUO, because then you'd have serious problems. This game is already in such a great state and I can only see improvement from here.
As someone who doesnt play MMOs, and who just tried out, this past week, both RIFT and WoW for the first time ever, I have to say: RIFT beats WoW by a mile.
The player characters are beautiful.
-WoW was freaking ugly.
The art direction is beautiful and also awesome (and I mean this literally, as in awe-inspiring). Seeing a rift open up for the first time in front of me and watching it change the landscape was incredible.
-WoW was, again, ugly as sin. Oh, except the opening cinematic with the dragon. That was pretty!
I will say that I really like the pleasant balance Rift strikes between cartoonish and realistic in their art design. Both of these points are subjective, and while Rift definitely has a far superior graphical coating should you be equipped to run it, it ends up looking a bit dull for me due to my 3-year-old rig, where WoW is rather shiny and crisp since I can run it near-maxed. If your computer has the juice, Rift is definitely my favorite in the graphics department (we'll not speak of the animation here.)
The quests don't make me feel like hammering a nail through my dick.
-I played WoW for about 5 hours, and got a bunch of kill x to gather y missions. Which, ok, being level 19 in RIFT I've hit also. But maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe it IS RIFT, but I seem to get the y's a hell of a lot more often than I did in WoW.
This is actually hilarious because Rift's questing is entirely identical to WoW's. Kill 5 X, gather/right click 5 X, run to X. The only minor difference is the name of the game, the rifts (and invasions), which use a public quest and reward system pulled from Warhammer Online and, due to their samey nature, quickly become as dull as standard quests.
This obviously should not be the case, but I'll chalk it up to minor things that just need to be reported and fixed around the launch date. I mean, it's still in BETA. It's so polished that people forget it's a beta phase and also hasn't officially launched with whatever large patch will be available at that time.
I see MMO apologists like this before every launch. It's beta. A patch will fix it. It'll be OK. The devs seem responsive to players.
And then the product launches just like it was. This is the product guys. What you have now.
I really hate to harp on Rift like this since it's head and shoulders above the launch of any similar MMO and I'm sure most of you will have tons of fun playing it, but these are real problems.
Speaking of the graphics, when my brother was first showing it to me, he was like 'see, I'm having some fun, stuff looks kinda like ass though'. I notice there aren't even any shadow effects and ask if he'd done anything but change the resolution. "Doesn't it usually default to high?" *few mouse clicks later* "Oh, it has shadow effects and stuff doesn't look like ass now. Huh".
I will say even before he changed it, it was better than WoW as I remember it, though I admittedly haven't even touched WoW since BC and didn't get past level 20-something either. Still.
Edit: Regarding the "It's in beta, it'll change" commentary in the post above mine: If it's a month before launch and in "beta" what you see is what you get. Unless you have a VERY good dev team who for some reason isn't being slammed trying to get stuff stable enough to work on launch day, AND they want to work on that specific item........they don't got the time. Isn't their fault either, so just don't get your hopes up.
I don't think I have played an MMO where the quests weren't all the same bitch quests that you always have to do, because you are the biggest bitch in the world. Yep, that random guy is going to sit in the Inn and get trashed, bang some hookers and probably your wife, while you go out and collect venom sacs from spiders.
From the looks of it The Old Republic seems to have more relevant quests, but who really knows anyways.
Speaking of the graphics, when my brother was first showing it to me, he was like 'see, I'm having some fun, stuff looks kinda like ass though'. I notice there aren't even any shadow effects and ask if he'd done anything but change the resolution. "Doesn't it usually default to high?" *few mouse clicks later* "Oh, it has shadow effects and stuff doesn't look like ass now. Huh".
I will say even before he changed it, it was better than WoW as I remember it, though I admittedly haven't even touched WoW since BC and didn't get past level 20-something either. Still.
Edit: Regarding the "It's in beta, it'll change" commentary in the post above mine: If it's a month before launch and in "beta" what you see is what you get. Unless you have a VERY good dev team who for some reason isn't being slammed trying to get stuff stable enough to work on launch day, AND they want to work on that specific item........they don't got the time. Isn't their fault either, so just don't get your hopes up.
I just did, so you didn't have to. Don't. It's just as ugly. Low poly counts, terribad textures and stiff animations THAT'S RIGHT WE'RE GOING THERE AGAIN
oh, and I just though about it a bit more. I think the invasions are precisely why I don't find the quest monotony monotonous. At any time, a rift could open up and I could be pulled into fighting off a butt-ton of baddies. It's not just gather y all the time. I'll do a quest, then shit goes down and I have to fix it. Then I have more y I need to gather.
Oh oh oh, and let's not forget getting paid for being fairly incompetent a little bit in the first few rifts. I love contribution-scaling-compensation wooooooooo
Was I the only one who thought the elemental summoner pets were very lackluster looking? At least the lesser earth and air elementals didn't look like they were any kind of powerful force.
I don't think I have played an MMO where the quests weren't all the same bitch quests that you always have to do, because you are the biggest bitch in the world. Yep, that random guy is going to sit in the Inn and get trashed, bang some hookers and probably your wife, while you go out and collect venom sacs from spiders.
From the looks of it The Old Republic seems to have more relevant quests, but who really knows anyways.
There WILL be a quest to collect 10 wampa hides.
But don't worry there will be 20 minutes of dialogue as to WHY those filthy wampa must die!
I keed I keed. But I actually hope they do that as a joke in TOR somewhere.
Was I the only one who thought the elemental summoner pets were very lackluster looking? At least the lesser earth and air elementals didn't look like they were any kind of powerful force.
Was I the only one who thought the elemental summoner pets were very lackluster looking? At least the lesser earth and air elementals didn't look like they were any kind of powerful force.
Better than the EQ2 Conjurer pets.
Yeah, I went there.
The tree ability that upgrades them into 'Greater' versions give them different look. Not seen the Air one, but the Earth Elemental gets BIG, and has lava cracks covering its body.
Madpandasuburbs west of chicagoRegistered Userregular
edited February 2011
Bit disappointed I found out about this just as the last beta phase ended. Eagerly awaiting the next one.
Few things i haven't found the answer to
a) can bards go faster than the mounts in game? either via talents or an upgraded spell version of the speed song?
b) with all this UI talk, have they mentioned plans for allowing UI mods? The only thing i was able to find when searching for rift UI mods was arguments on the forums about how dps meters etc were [required | the devil]
This is kind of a big thing, while the stock ui looks ok enough, I've rolled with grid, mouseover macros for healing (which I see you can do) and hotbar/bags mods forever in WoW.
oh and +1 for defiant PvP if I like the beta enough.
Was I the only one who thought the elemental summoner pets were very lackluster looking? At least the lesser earth and air elementals didn't look like they were any kind of powerful force.
Better than the EQ2 Conjurer pets.
Yeah, I went there.
The tree ability that upgrades them into 'Greater' versions give them different look. Not seen the Air one, but the Earth Elemental gets BIG, and has lava cracks covering its body.
But even the greater rock elemental was still maybe shoulder height, pets that should be taking damage for you should prbly look tougher than you, or at least as big, not vanity pet size. IMO anyway.
b) with all this UI talk, have they mentioned plans for allowing UI mods? The only thing i was able to find when searching for rift UI mods was arguments on the forums about how dps meters etc were [required | the devil]
Someone else could probably elaborate or provide a link but I think Trion is very anti-mod. That's what I've been hearing so far, but it might change after launch.
b) with all this UI talk, have they mentioned plans for allowing UI mods? The only thing i was able to find when searching for rift UI mods was arguments on the forums about how dps meters etc were [required | the devil]
Someone else could probably elaborate or provide a link but I think Trion is very anti-mod. That's what I've been hearing so far, but it might change after launch.
http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?38788-RIFT-and-Add-ons Is their official response to it for the time being, a TL;DR is basically as such: Don't officially support them right now, they wont go full blown API like WoW does until they can make it work good which is why it isn't in for release. They're cool with Combat Log Parses, however.
b) with all this UI talk, have they mentioned plans for allowing UI mods? The only thing i was able to find when searching for rift UI mods was arguments on the forums about how dps meters etc were [required | the devil]
Someone else could probably elaborate or provide a link but I think Trion is very anti-mod. That's what I've been hearing so far, but it might change after launch.
http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?38788-RIFT-and-Add-ons Is their official response to it for the time being, a TL;DR is basically as such: Don't officially support them right now, they wont go full blown API like WoW does until they can make it work good which is why it isn't in for release. They're cool with Combat Log Parses, however.
Ay, the greater earth is much closer to a reasonable size, but the lesser versions are what I was referring to as 'vanity pet' size.
I'm being sincere here, because I like the idea of playing an MMO that's not WoW.
I looked at the videos, check the website, did a little reading, etc. But in a nutshell, can someone explain to me why I should switch to Rift.
Because, in all honesty, if it's just a reskinned WoW with some new but not necessarily better twists, I'm going to find it hard to switch.
It is WoW with better graphics, Rifts (public quests) and much better class switching (roles). I don't think it has an arena though. This is just my opinion as someone who is most likely burned out on MMOs after hardcore raiding in WoW for a while (#2 NA Nefarion kill /flex...yeah it was that long ago) and just hasn't got back in really since then.
Depends on exactly what you're looking for, but a lot of fantasy MMOs are going to be WoW reskinned with a new feature or two. As far as reason to play:
-The class system in Rift seems to be much better than the one in WoW
-The rifts and invasions are cool (particularly when people aren't being idiots about not defending from the invasions)
-The reskinning, depending on what you're looking for, is nice.
The biggest reason to switch though? The open beta a week from Friday is free and so if you don't end up liking it all you spent was time.
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
edited February 2011
JAEF, the first half of your complaints are standard fare in an MMO for a reason. These games are first and foremost a money making venture, and as such they need to introduce time/money sinks, frequent carrots, etc.
You have to upgrade skills at a vendor because money is created in the economy out of thin air and it needs to be removed. This is one way. They took the most enjoyable road, though, because you can learn new skills/spells on the fly without having to port back to a town to train. You can keep on doing what you're doing until you want to go turn in quests, sell shut, whatever.
The crafting system tiers is another standard idea that works. You want players to have smaller goals inside of larger goals inside of even larger goals. Tiny carrots along the way to keep them feeling rewarded. You just got a new recipe. Reward. You just finished Novice. Reward. If crafting was simply "I'm 230/255," it would be less interesting. And the refining materials thing, well that's just a time sink. You'll never see those disappear in an MMO. In a singleplayer game, you want to remove any aspect that is boring in any way needlessly, but in an MMO, that doesn't work.
You can't have a "refine everything all at once button" without trivializing crafting. Why stop there? Just let people upgrade their crafting skill by typing in what level they want. Collecting flowers is tedious. Refining hides is tedious. Smelting ore is tedious. Crafting should be fun, so get rid of all that? Until someone comes up with a brand new crafting system that somehow is exciting to play all the way through, we are going to see these time sinks.
WAR tried to innovate crafting. It was craptacular.
I certainly would not call it a reskinned WoW graphically, however when it comes to the most basic of gameplay... yeah it'll feel similar. Just like WoW wasn't -too- different from MMOs before it.
The Soul system for the classes is one large draw, you have the four basic 'Callings' Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Mage and within each one is nine souls eight of which you get 'normally' one is a PvP soul purchased through PvP currency. Within your calling, you can mix and match any three souls you wish. By Level 50 you'd have 66 points to mess around with, so plenty of room to experiment.
I think the other biggest draw is the rift/invasion system. To put it in a nutshell, as you say. You're happily doing your thing, questing and such. There's this rift thing way off over yonder, but you've not gone over to it for some reason. Let's just say no one else has either.
When you return to your quest hub you find that the rift had spawned an invasion, which then pillaged the little npc camp, and then took it over. You'd need to kill the creatures/the formed idol to reclaim the spot. Basic in a singular term, but imagine this happening over the entire zone... with large groups of elite creatures rampaging around, making even the roads and biggest of quest hubs unsafe.
Name me a single MMO that is dynamic enough that something like this can happen, on the fly, without GM intervention that requires a group effort to take back the zone.
Name me a single MMO that is dynamic enough that something like this can happen, on the fly, without GM intervention that requires a group effort to take back the zone.
EVE. But I don't think that's what you meant. Plus SPREADSHEETS IN SPACE!
I still had fun for a lot of the beta, but I don't see this as having lasting power.
This is how I felt after playing for 12 hours, and getting to level 18.
But somewhere around hour 20, something "clicked" and I started having more fun with Rift than I have with any other MMO in a long time. Maybe I finally had enough soul points to start really tweaking my "class". Maybe I finally got the "right" gear and suddenly became competitive. Maybe I simply became powerful enough that I wasn't risking a chain of six to ten defeats every time I stepped into a Rift or met an invasion force on a road. In any case, I really started enjoying Rift.
I more-or-less forced my Lovely Partner to try it out. She played for three hours and told me we needed to buy this. So we have two CE preorders - one from D2D and one from BestBuy - and we're already signed up for six months of time. Maybe that's a lot of money, but we just got back from a ski week and dropping $90 a day for lift tickets. Comparing $180 for two days of skiing that is going to vary depending on the weather, or "risking" $200 for six months of game subscription that we are already having fun with... it's pretty easy decision.
There's no guarantee that Rift wont end up just like WAR.
Despite WAR's imminent death - they are dropping to a total of TWO servers in March - they recovered the cost of development and (according to a recent interview with an EA exec) actually returned a decent profit. That is generally considered to be a "success". Based on the amount of buzz and attention that Rift is getting right now, I'm absolutely certain that Rift will be a "success" for Trion.
Whether it is a "success" in terms of longevity is a different matter. Maybe we won't be playing it in six months, but it's a fun game today and that's why we subscribe. If it stops being fun, we cancel our accounts and walk away; no one is "forcing" us to play!
We'll be rolling Guardian, so probably not joining the PA guild(s).
If a game like WAR can turn a profit and appear to fail so badly (did it even last a year? It died pretty fast...) is the monthly cost too high? Seems kind of insane that they can turn a profit like that.
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I have been playing a Reaver/Warlard/Void Knight tank to pair with my wife's rogue. And it is good stuff. the reaver's debuff tanking is just great and pairs well with a quick damage dealer.
My Chloro that I've been playing on the side is also awesome. I love the healing aspect. I just wish I had the old clique (click healing mods) from wow. I just got to used to not having to switch targets and just clicking on portraits.
*Begins violently clawing out his own eyes*
There's a thread on the official Rift Forums of some 'brah' tard saying all females in fantasy games need to look like porn stars in platekinis.
KILL ME NOW.
\o I did. I figured what the hell, it's the same price as a brand new 360 game and I know I've pissed away full price on more than one of those games.
PSN: Hellcore- Steam MWO: Hellcore
Off the top of my head from playing 1-19 in the recent beta (warning, pedantry):
Why do I have to train my skills every X level? Why do skill trainers even exist? You already award skills when talents are spent, why don't you scale them with player level?- Similarly with trade skills, why are they capped at blocks of 75? Why do I have to hit the skill cap to train the next block instead of 2/3 of the way (75/75 instead of 50/75)? Why do I have to train them at all past the initial choosing? Or spend ridiculous amounts of time to smelt bars or tan hides or do anything like that? Your response here might be "so that you can gain mining/butchery skillups from that so you don't have to mine as much/skin as much" to which the obvious reply is "reduce the skill curve to adjust for that."
- Not enough is communicated to the player about enemy/boss abilities. I shouldn't have to guess at how abilities function based on their (awkward RP) spell name on the cast bar or worse, having to pore through a combat log. Maybe this is different in higher level dungeons? Regardless, it makes every non-boss (and most boss) mob seem like a generic punching bag. This is exacerbated by the lack of distinct visuals on spells. Perhaps it was my medium graphics settings?
- If I go into an instance and fail, how do I know what the breaking point was? Is my DPS not good enough? Is the tank doing something wrong? Is the healer missing something? You get zero feedback in any of these areas.
- Why doesn't worthless grey trash loot autosold when I open a vendor? Why do I have to play a whack-a-mole avoid-stuff-I-actually-need minigame every time I visit one? If this is intentional, why isn't item quality highlighted more clearly without having to hover over it?
- Why don't pre-max level battlegrounds scale your stats to the maximum level of that group? This makes battlegrounds
There are more, but I'm tired and it's been a few days since I played. I'm sure if I had played a bit longer and more recently I would have many more things I could easily rattle off. These things, along with poor animations and all the other smaller issues and nuances and quirks and engine issues themselves aren't reasons to not buy the game. No one writes down "I had to alt tab for 2 minutes while I smelted 80 tin bars" in their cancellation box. But this speaks to Trion's approach to game design and what we have to look forward to. There are some novel ideas and interesting potential in some of what Trion is doing, but the overarching design simply feels like WoW's PvE mashed with Warhammer's PvP with a sprinkle of neato ideas some devs had. The end result is an unpolished, unfinished product (I read in the thread earlier that raid frames aren't even done?) that's less than a month from launch.
I've followed almost every MMO launch since Everquest. I've read a lot of hopes and assurances and promises that things can or will be fixed by [launch/month from launch/x time from launch] but the fact is that the product you're seeing now is going to be, minus a handful of additions and tweaks, the product that early adopters see for the first two months. Those first two months are hugely important in defining the product's future. AoC (just as an example) launched with a super neat single-playeresque 1-20 experience and then collapsed as you approached the clearly unfinished endgame. This combined with tragically unbalanced classes and gameplay that quickly grew tired led to a massive drop in playerbase almost immediately after launch. Great, you can sell a lot of boxes and maybe eek out some profit with an acceptable amount of subscriptions, but is it a good game? Will it thrive long enough to become one? Will people care enough to stick around and see? Or will you have to lay off 70% of your staff.
As MMOs go, Rift is probably the best-quality-at-launch EQ-style MMO I've seen since WoW. This has a lot to do with how much they simply ape directly from WoW (many things to their detriment, sadly.) But that's not enough. I can see this game gaining a healthy enough playerbase to be profitable and a good amount of people who are happy with the product as it is (WoW-but-not-WoW), which is great and I'm happy for all of you that will enjoy it and are looking forward to it. I just wish they had done something more.
Turn on "Show Target of Target" and "Cast on Target of Target"
This will, when you have a mob targetted, cast your damaging spells on the monster and your heals on the monster's target.
All of your AoE healing needs should be met with Lifegiving Veil and Nourish.
Yeah, these are the big issues for me. The combat is VERY obfuscated, you cannot really tell what is going on simply by looking at it like you can in WoW (the animation complaints further back in the thread are part of this too). Debuffs are terrible in this regard too, I can cleanse poison/disease? Oh, that'd be cool if I had any fucking clue which debuffs were poisons and diseases.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Honestly I kind of feel refreshed not knowing a lot of this stuff. Is this thing dying nice and quick? Okay that's good, does Target-of-Target show it hitting me since I'm the tank? Yep it does, we're good.
Healer got mana? Not getting hit?
Good.
Also Corrigan I'm almost 100% certain there is indeed an option to show only your own debuffs on a target... or, hm... was it only your own buffs on yourself? I'll be sure to put a suggestion in for that then, it'd be a good idea.
However simply asking someone in the group "Hey does one of your things do *insert status effect*" Course that's not gonna work well in a random rifty raid.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
The player characters are beautiful.
-WoW was freaking ugly.
The art direction is beautiful and also awesome (and I mean this literally, as in awe-inspiring). Seeing a rift open up for the first time in front of me and watching it change the landscape was incredible.
-WoW was, again, ugly as sin. Oh, except the opening cinematic with the dragon. That was pretty!
The quests don't make me feel like hammering a nail through my dick.
-I played WoW for about 5 hours, and got a bunch of kill x to gather y missions. Which, ok, being level 19 in RIFT I've hit also. But maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe it IS RIFT, but I seem to get the y's a hell of a lot more often than I did in WoW.
The class structure is refreshing and I cant wait to get more play time and try out new classes. Made perfect sense when I started playing.
-I still have no clue how I was supposed to get new skills or make them better in WoW.
So basically, to a newcomer to the mamorpagorg genre, I'm super excited to play more. Preordered last night!
XBL: Torn Hoodie
@hoodiethirteen
This obviously should not be the case, but I'll chalk it up to minor things that just need to be reported and fixed around the launch date. I mean, it's still in BETA. It's so polished that people forget it's a beta phase and also hasn't officially launched with whatever large patch will be available at that time.
A lot of complaints people have aren't really deal-breakers, just inconveniences that will probably (hopefully) be addressed within the first month or so of the game's release.
I'm honestly just glad that this game didn't have a release date of say, June 2011, and the company (or it's investors or daddy company) didn't want want to rush it out now like DCUO, because then you'd have serious problems. This game is already in such a great state and I can only see improvement from here.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
This is actually hilarious because Rift's questing is entirely identical to WoW's. Kill 5 X, gather/right click 5 X, run to X. The only minor difference is the name of the game, the rifts (and invasions), which use a public quest and reward system pulled from Warhammer Online and, due to their samey nature, quickly become as dull as standard quests.
I see MMO apologists like this before every launch. It's beta. A patch will fix it. It'll be OK. The devs seem responsive to players.
And then the product launches just like it was. This is the product guys. What you have now.
I really hate to harp on Rift like this since it's head and shoulders above the launch of any similar MMO and I'm sure most of you will have tons of fun playing it, but these are real problems.
I will say even before he changed it, it was better than WoW as I remember it, though I admittedly haven't even touched WoW since BC and didn't get past level 20-something either. Still.
Edit: Regarding the "It's in beta, it'll change" commentary in the post above mine: If it's a month before launch and in "beta" what you see is what you get. Unless you have a VERY good dev team who for some reason isn't being slammed trying to get stuff stable enough to work on launch day, AND they want to work on that specific item........they don't got the time. Isn't their fault either, so just don't get your hopes up.
From the looks of it The Old Republic seems to have more relevant quests, but who really knows anyways.
I just did, so you didn't have to. Don't. It's just as ugly. Low poly counts, terribad textures and stiff animations THAT'S RIGHT WE'RE GOING THERE AGAIN
oh, and I just though about it a bit more. I think the invasions are precisely why I don't find the quest monotony monotonous. At any time, a rift could open up and I could be pulled into fighting off a butt-ton of baddies. It's not just gather y all the time. I'll do a quest, then shit goes down and I have to fix it. Then I have more y I need to gather.
Oh oh oh, and let's not forget getting paid for being fairly incompetent a little bit in the first few rifts. I love contribution-scaling-compensation wooooooooo
XBL: Torn Hoodie
@hoodiethirteen
There WILL be a quest to collect 10 wampa hides.
But don't worry there will be 20 minutes of dialogue as to WHY those filthy wampa must die!
I keed I keed. But I actually hope they do that as a joke in TOR somewhere.
Better than the EQ2 Conjurer pets.
Yeah, I went there.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
The tree ability that upgrades them into 'Greater' versions give them different look. Not seen the Air one, but the Earth Elemental gets BIG, and has lava cracks covering its body.
Few things i haven't found the answer to
a) can bards go faster than the mounts in game? either via talents or an upgraded spell version of the speed song?
b) with all this UI talk, have they mentioned plans for allowing UI mods? The only thing i was able to find when searching for rift UI mods was arguments on the forums about how dps meters etc were [required | the devil]
This is kind of a big thing, while the stock ui looks ok enough, I've rolled with grid, mouseover macros for healing (which I see you can do) and hotbar/bags mods forever in WoW.
oh and +1 for defiant PvP if I like the beta enough.
Steam/PSN/XBL/Minecraft / LoL / - Benevicious | WoW - Duckwood - Rajhek
But even the greater rock elemental was still maybe shoulder height, pets that should be taking damage for you should prbly look tougher than you, or at least as big, not vanity pet size. IMO anyway.
Someone else could probably elaborate or provide a link but I think Trion is very anti-mod. That's what I've been hearing so far, but it might change after launch.
PSN: Hellcore- Steam MWO: Hellcore
My tiny little Wastral is what I'd consider a 'vanity' size.
http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?38788-RIFT-and-Add-ons Is their official response to it for the time being, a TL;DR is basically as such: Don't officially support them right now, they wont go full blown API like WoW does until they can make it work good which is why it isn't in for release. They're cool with Combat Log Parses, however.
Ay, the greater earth is much closer to a reasonable size, but the lesser versions are what I was referring to as 'vanity pet' size.
Nope. The fastest you can go is 20% faster, but you can get a skill that allows you to be that fast in battle (which is insanely good for pvp).
No
I looked at the videos, check the website, did a little reading, etc. But in a nutshell, can someone explain to me why I should switch to Rift.
Because, in all honesty, if it's just a reskinned WoW with some new but not necessarily better twists, I'm going to find it hard to switch.
It is WoW with better graphics, Rifts (public quests) and much better class switching (roles). I don't think it has an arena though. This is just my opinion as someone who is most likely burned out on MMOs after hardcore raiding in WoW for a while (#2 NA Nefarion kill /flex...yeah it was that long ago) and just hasn't got back in really since then.
-The class system in Rift seems to be much better than the one in WoW
-The rifts and invasions are cool (particularly when people aren't being idiots about not defending from the invasions)
-The reskinning, depending on what you're looking for, is nice.
The biggest reason to switch though? The open beta a week from Friday is free and so if you don't end up liking it all you spent was time.
You have to upgrade skills at a vendor because money is created in the economy out of thin air and it needs to be removed. This is one way. They took the most enjoyable road, though, because you can learn new skills/spells on the fly without having to port back to a town to train. You can keep on doing what you're doing until you want to go turn in quests, sell shut, whatever.
The crafting system tiers is another standard idea that works. You want players to have smaller goals inside of larger goals inside of even larger goals. Tiny carrots along the way to keep them feeling rewarded. You just got a new recipe. Reward. You just finished Novice. Reward. If crafting was simply "I'm 230/255," it would be less interesting. And the refining materials thing, well that's just a time sink. You'll never see those disappear in an MMO. In a singleplayer game, you want to remove any aspect that is boring in any way needlessly, but in an MMO, that doesn't work.
You can't have a "refine everything all at once button" without trivializing crafting. Why stop there? Just let people upgrade their crafting skill by typing in what level they want. Collecting flowers is tedious. Refining hides is tedious. Smelting ore is tedious. Crafting should be fun, so get rid of all that? Until someone comes up with a brand new crafting system that somehow is exciting to play all the way through, we are going to see these time sinks.
WAR tried to innovate crafting. It was craptacular.
I guess I liked it because I absolutely fucking hate crafting. And WAR's version was "here you go!"
The Soul system for the classes is one large draw, you have the four basic 'Callings' Warrior, Rogue, Cleric and Mage and within each one is nine souls eight of which you get 'normally' one is a PvP soul purchased through PvP currency. Within your calling, you can mix and match any three souls you wish. By Level 50 you'd have 66 points to mess around with, so plenty of room to experiment.
I think the other biggest draw is the rift/invasion system. To put it in a nutshell, as you say. You're happily doing your thing, questing and such. There's this rift thing way off over yonder, but you've not gone over to it for some reason. Let's just say no one else has either.
When you return to your quest hub you find that the rift had spawned an invasion, which then pillaged the little npc camp, and then took it over. You'd need to kill the creatures/the formed idol to reclaim the spot. Basic in a singular term, but imagine this happening over the entire zone... with large groups of elite creatures rampaging around, making even the roads and biggest of quest hubs unsafe.
Name me a single MMO that is dynamic enough that something like this can happen, on the fly, without GM intervention that requires a group effort to take back the zone.
EVE. But I don't think that's what you meant. Plus SPREADSHEETS IN SPACE!
This is how I felt after playing for 12 hours, and getting to level 18.
But somewhere around hour 20, something "clicked" and I started having more fun with Rift than I have with any other MMO in a long time. Maybe I finally had enough soul points to start really tweaking my "class". Maybe I finally got the "right" gear and suddenly became competitive. Maybe I simply became powerful enough that I wasn't risking a chain of six to ten defeats every time I stepped into a Rift or met an invasion force on a road. In any case, I really started enjoying Rift.
I more-or-less forced my Lovely Partner to try it out. She played for three hours and told me we needed to buy this. So we have two CE preorders - one from D2D and one from BestBuy - and we're already signed up for six months of time. Maybe that's a lot of money, but we just got back from a ski week and dropping $90 a day for lift tickets. Comparing $180 for two days of skiing that is going to vary depending on the weather, or "risking" $200 for six months of game subscription that we are already having fun with... it's pretty easy decision.
There's no guarantee that Rift wont end up just like WAR.
Despite WAR's imminent death - they are dropping to a total of TWO servers in March - they recovered the cost of development and (according to a recent interview with an EA exec) actually returned a decent profit. That is generally considered to be a "success". Based on the amount of buzz and attention that Rift is getting right now, I'm absolutely certain that Rift will be a "success" for Trion.
Whether it is a "success" in terms of longevity is a different matter. Maybe we won't be playing it in six months, but it's a fun game today and that's why we subscribe. If it stops being fun, we cancel our accounts and walk away; no one is "forcing" us to play!
We'll be rolling Guardian, so probably not joining the PA guild(s).