Rift: Planes of Telara

[Tarami]

The rifts didn't really impress me the way they were presented in the betas. I appriciate the technological muscle needed to realize them, I just don't think they added that much actual value or replayability to the game. There was a kind of naked, algorithmic nature to them that I found extremely discouraging. I also didn't get the sense of "working together" as much as trying to zerg them (while placing as high as possible in the ranking.) It was hopeless as a healer especially and I don't really believe in the longevity of "DPS as hard as you can" as a type of content. They do appear to work correctly though.

The quests were, quite frankly, fucking, god-damn awful. Arrive at a quest hub. Get 4-5 quests; two kill quests, for three types of mobs. One quest to loot an item from bodies. One quest to loot something from static objects. Repeat twice, then proceed to ding. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. "But that's every MMO!" Yeah, no. LotRO takes a bunch of basic quest types and gets them much, much farther than this, or at the very least manage to be assymmetrical. There's also some variation, intended or not, in difficulty and approach. This was painfully symmetrical in every sense.

Only seen two zones (the two starter zones) but judging from that, the world looks nice. It's about as interesting as WoW's but less than LotRO's. It has that weird, barren feel that WAR and AoC have. It's like a vague sense of agoraphobia with intermittent attacks of claustrophobia, like it's always slightly out of proportion in some way, an uncanny valley of sorts. Or, as a friend put it, "this must be how it feels to be Superman." Not pleasant enough to feel like sitting down just about anywhere and just thinking about things. Yeah, I do that in MMOs.

Combat is like WoW. Everyone who plays WoW don't seem to think so but according to me they're pretty much the same. Responsive and a little clunky. The targetting is however iffy. Mechanics are run-of-the-mill DIKU and doing some light theorycrafting has me believing that they simply just ripped WoW's more or less straight off. Stats, items and abilities seem to combine in the exact same way.

I find graphics and animations to be good. Occasionally very pretty and most of all very consistent. There's however a great lack of variety in terms of weaponry and armour. May be that they stripped out a lot to keep the downloads down in size for the beta, but it was very disheartening. Checking out the armour sets in the wardrobe made it even more so; looked like the worst out of WAR and LotRO combined. YMMV.

Sound was servicable but unspectacular. Music unintrusive, bordering on pointless.

The instances are simplistic but okay. The difficulty seems about right. One of them, Realms of the Fae, has a pretty neat theme where you go through the seasons as you progress through the instance (spring/summer/autumn/winter.) The winter finale was very cool, on the summit of a mountain with a blizzard raging.

The soul system is the most interesting part of it all but I don't have a lot to add there, it seems too much in flux. It seems good. Time will tell.

Lastly, no serious bugs, anywhere. This is in itself very impressive. Does it make Rift worth playing? I don't know. I guess that depends on how much you hate bugs.

Verdict after ~35 hours of playtime: Pretty much every DIKU MMO you've played is in there somewhere. They've stolen from everyone but WoW in particular and ended up with another very polished, very mechanical MMORPG. There's probably a lot of fun to find in the theorycrafting of the soul system and the grinding of rifts, but the game doesn't exactly radiate warmth.

As always, YMMV.

[Mrbloodworth]

Oh, sound. The effect on the water, and entering a water rift. Fucking well done. I was sitting for hours just going in and out.

[Draegan]

As I understand it, you only get 50 points to spend per role.  Aren't you shooting yourself in the foot by splitting that pool of points between 2, or even 3, souls?  Or am I just not understanding how it all works?

You get 51 points.

Here's an exercise (assuming things don't change drastically) for the next beta event.  Take a look at as many soul trees as possible and find where the sweet spot is in each tree.  Once you find that sweet spot, take a look at what root abilities you don't get without putting more points in.  For example if you put 31 points in one tree, what root abilities would you get from 32 to 51 points?  Are they necessary?  

If you think they are necessary, take a look at another soul and see what you would get with those 20 points and see if those benefits outweigh the additional points.  

[Murgos]

In my post before the NDA drop I said there were three big items on my list of peeves.  One and two were covered, the third one is that 'newbie road'.

Go down path to next hub, interact, get quests, kill/collect, turn in, ding, go down path to next hub, repeat.

I'm chalking up the linearity of the newbie zones to them being newbie zones, the map is enormous so if the PvE quest mechanic stays the same it will be very disappointing.  Pretty much unplayable for me, because my main focus when playing an MMO these days is exploration.

[Modern Angel]

On what Tarami said, I think there's a very valid point about feel in there which was brought up on the forums and relayed to me by a friend. It prompted a long discussion.

The game thrusts you right into a war. This is something that we've always said that we want but now that we have it in a MMO without crippling bugs and content issues it's almost too much. There's no time to appreciate and grow fond of the world. One of the things LOTRO and WoW do very well is to have a world you care about on some level due to the slow ramp up of the action. Like Elwynn Forest... nothing in there is going to end the world. So you kill some low level, local bad guys and discover it's connected to stuff in Westfall, which is slightly bigger. LOTRO (and the novels for that matter) starts with hobbits. It will end with hobbits.

I may not be phrasing this as nicely as I want. But the world is cool, pretty and fairly dynamic when you toss in the rifts but you don't have space to breathe and figure out why you should give a shit about it. It's very well realized visually, which is a huge deal and one of only a few MMOs that have actually done that, but there's a small disconnect between yourself and the world.

[Sky]

As I understand it, you only get 50 points to spend per role.  Aren't you shooting yourself in the foot by splitting that pool of points between 2, or even 3, souls?  Or am I just not understanding how it all works?

As Drae said, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in the soul trees. Going 10-20 points is going to get you a lot of the soul's basic functionality, with 31 (the top of the tree) getting you the majority of it. From what I was looking at, after 31 the gains really start spreading out, the last 20 points might only get you 6 or 8 abilities. Are they worth it? Dunno. Anyway, Scott said more points are on the way, hopefully by the third beta!

Sound: yeah, the water stuff is cool. Also the stun effects, your vision blurs and you get a 'concussed' sound diminishment. Nice little touches, there are a ton of them.

[Draegan]

I always thought LOTRO's quests were standard fair in regards to the world at large as any other game.

[Modern Angel]

I always thought LOTRO's quests were standard fair in regards to the world at large as any other game.

The writing quality is better but that only works if you read the quests. The day in, day out questing is pretty standard. The only diku doing truly radical stuff is Cataclysm WoW but it's so on rails that I'm not certain if the trade off is worth it.

[Draegan]

I only played through the Goblin newbie are and all of Azshara but I have yet to see anything truly awesome about Cata questing.  It's just a better and more streamlined diku kill 10 rats experience with a lots of auto transporting you around here and there.

Who reads quest text?  Really?

[Sky]

Who reads quest text?  Really?

Hi!

[Raguel]

I'm disappointed that the paladin class doesn't really fit the mold of what I'd consider a paladin to be (i.e. no any time heals and from what I saw no buffs, but I really didn't look hard after finding no heal spells  )

I can't stress enough how disappointed I am with how much this game reminds me of WoW (especially given that I've only played it for about 1 1/2 mos and I'm already getting tired of it). The class system appears awesome, I just wish the PvE matched it.

Heh.

Make up your mind.  Do you want the game to be more like WoW or less?  Because it's pretty silly to complain that the Rift Paladin isn't exactly the same as the WoW one and then in the next breath whine about how much the game is like WoW.

I wasn't expecting a WoW-like paladin but a DnD like paladin.   , or  the paladin that apparently only exists in my head (see the "story in games" thread). Mostly I want a holy warrior that can heal a bit. In Rifts, it looks like some mix of cleric souls will get me what I want so that's what I'm going to play instead of a paladin.

[Hawkbit]

I'm available a lot more for the next event.  I'll get on TS this time and roll up where F13 will be.  

I'm officially drinking the koolaid.  

While I do feel that the quest hub system is dated, the lore and rifts make up for it.  

If there's no official F13 guild when this goes live, I'll likely look to join Draegan's guild.  

Well done.

[Threash]

I'm disappointed that the paladin class doesn't really fit the mold of what I'd consider a paladin to be (i.e. no any time heals and from what I saw no buffs, but I really didn't look hard after finding no heal spells  )

I can't stress enough how disappointed I am with how much this game reminds me of WoW (especially given that I've only played it for about 1 1/2 mos and I'm already getting tired of it). The class system appears awesome, I just wish the PvE matched it.

Heh.

Make up your mind.  Do you want the game to be more like WoW or less?  Because it's pretty silly to complain that the Rift Paladin isn't exactly the same as the WoW one and then in the next breath whine about how much the game is like WoW.

I wasn't expecting a WoW-like paladin but a DnD like paladin.   , or  the paladin that apparently only exists in my head (see the "story in games" thread). Mostly I want a holy warrior that can heal a bit. In Rifts, it looks like some mix of cleric souls will get me what I want so that's what I'm going to play instead of a paladin.

Yeah what you want is the justicar.

[Segoris]

The instances are simplistic but okay. The difficulty seems about right. One of them, Realms of the Fae, has a pretty neat theme where you go through the seasons as you progress through the instance (spring/summer/autumn/winter.) The winter finale was very cool, on the summit of a mountain with a blizzard raging.

RoF had some nice design for a starter dungeon between the seasonal theme and two of the bosses (the boss with two assistants, one healing them while the other increases the bosses' damage and the last boss with the waves of mobs), but overall I think it just didn't stand up to Iron Tombs.

I think IT was really well done as I can't remember the last time, if ever, the first instance had so many different things going on. The rock piles that you need to destroy which spawn mobs, the light beacons that allow you to reenact the movie Pitch Black, fighting the 3 kings, the end boss with an AE attack unless you're standing on a beacon. For end game, no it's not some amazing design, but for the starter dungeon I thought it was great.

[Tarami]

In my post before the NDA drop I said there were three big items on my list of peeves.  One and two were covered, the third one is that 'newbie road'.

Go down path to next hub, interact, get quests, kill/collect, turn in, ding, go down path to next hub, repeat.

I'm chalking up the linearity of the newbie zones to them being newbie zones, the map is enormous so if the PvE quest mechanic stays the same it will be very disappointing.  Pretty much unplayable for me, because my main focus when playing an MMO these days is exploration.

I mentioned that in a round-about way, but you're absolutely correct. The 1-20 progression is a soul-crushing grind that I only dragged myself through once each weekend. The fact that there are literally 3 or 4 types of quests just emphasizes that problem. There's just barely enough quests in the starter zones to hit 20, at that.

Modern Angel, I think there's a lack of.. beauty and history, somehow. Even if I just go out in the woods around here and sit down on a rock, there's a kind of wild beauty to the pines. Just sitting there gives me a sense of age and ancient times. LotRO is the same, sitting on top a ruin in the outskirts of a forest gives a notion of insignificance - there are things so old here that I'm just a speck of shit on the tapestry of history. It gives you perspective. It's not just about Here and Now. Almost everything in Rift seems like it could be built yesterday. There's no proper sense of scale or permanence.

I always thought LOTRO's quests were standard fair in regards to the world at large as any other game.

The writing quality is better but that only works if you read the quests. The day in, day out questing is pretty standard. The only diku doing truly radical stuff is Cataclysm WoW but it's so on rails that I'm not certain if the trade off is worth it.

I can't agree with this even under the pretention that "all quests are alike." LotRO has pie/mail deliveries, a couple of small quest instances, plenty of scripted little events, escorts, rescues, towns burning to the ground, hobbits disguising as Black Riders to scare townfolks, wolves attacking the farmer's hens and so on and so on. There's a lot of variety in approach at any rate. It tries its damnest to make you care about what you do and these are all things that happen before level 20. There are also a number of sub-zones that have their own little lore and feel. That's not to say LotRO doesn't have (many) very grindy, standard quests, but it does a lot using some pretty blunt tools to mix it up.

Silverwood has murdering evil dudes and stealing/destroying their stuff, five simultaneous tasks at a time. Indefinitely. There are a few exceptions and they're all related to the dwarf Scotty pretty much.

Edit: Should be added that the Defiant zone, Freemarch, is better in this regard. Growing crops was rather neat, for example.

Who reads quest text?  Really?

Many people still do. Many others still care about the general gist of the quest, even if they don't actually read the text. There are many ways to kill dudes and loot shit, Rift has a tendency to chose the most boring way.

To me it seems like you're saying "who cares if the game is grindy and dull, we just do it to ding anyway" which strikes me as apologetic. It may be true for some people, but far from everyone. If you have to stick your dick somewhere, there's a difference in pain between putting it between two loaves of bread and two defibrillator paddles.

[Segoris]

In my post before the NDA drop I said there were three big items on my list of peeves.  One and two were covered, the third one is that 'newbie road'.

Go down path to next hub, interact, get quests, kill/collect, turn in, ding, go down path to next hub, repeat.

I'm chalking up the linearity of the newbie zones to them being newbie zones, the map is enormous so if the PvE quest mechanic stays the same it will be very disappointing.  Pretty much unplayable for me, because my main focus when playing an MMO these days is exploration.

I mentioned that in a round-about way, but you're absolutely correct. The 1-20 progression is a soul-crushing grind that I only dragged myself through once each weekend. The fact that there are literally 3 or 4 types of quests just emphasizes that problem. There's just barely enough quests in the starter zones to hit 20, at that.

Leveling via rifts was not a bad way to level and avoid the same 'ole same 'ole quests. IMO, two things are needed to greatly improve the leveling experience 1) a merchant with gear/weapons/armor available with the currency items you get in rift 2) making quests simply level based (save for story line quests) instead of making it so you have to complete all the quests in an area to go to the next.

[Tarami]

I don't think the Rift frequency we saw in the betas is the frequency intended for the live game (the zones would be a mess with less population,) which makes them less feasible to use for levelling.

[Segoris]

Less feasible to level by exclusively, but to mix with questing/grinding should still be a good viable option.

[Draegan]

I'm available a lot more for the next event.  I'll get on TS this time and roll up where F13 will be.  

I'm officially drinking the koolaid.  

While I do feel that the quest hub system is dated, the lore and rifts make up for it.  

If there's no official F13 guild when this goes live, I'll likely look to join Draegan's guild.  

Well done.

No guild this time!  I don't have enough time like with Aion.  Having a faincee and soon to be wife kind of nixes that idea.

[Lantyssa]

Not if you get her interested in the game.

[Threash]

Hopefully a good complete talent calc shows up soon.

[Ghambit]

I don't think the Rift frequency we saw in the betas is the frequency intended for the live game (the zones would be a mess with less population,) which makes them less feasible to use for levelling.

Your argument, though valid for a 'normal' game, has no bearing on this one.  Rift is server-side and half the point of these weekend tests was to show-off the flexibility that affords.  They can tweak them at will... position, difficulty, frequency, whatever.  It's quite literally your neckbeard dungeonmaster sitting at the server-controls and messing with people.

So there is no "intended frequency."  They'll tweak it as the playerbase permits and maybe get overzealous occasionally to throw people off.  Perhaps a raid boss in that favorite quest hub, etc.  Or, maybe a full-on scripted event, who knows.  In a way, the weekend stuff and the impending open beta are really just experiments to see how far they can take things w/o pissing people off and/or breaking the game.

Great example of this was the 1st beta event as Defiant.  The mob spawns were woefully underpopulated and took waaaay too long to refresh, so there was a lot of mindless waiting and group fights over the scraps.  By the next day this was fixed and you then had to be mindful of your pulls, maybe even group sometimes.  Same deal with the Rifts... we were raping them every time they popped into existence even for a split second.  By the end of the weekend they were invading towns.  (shrug)

I didnt get to play for the whole weekend this last time, but of the time I did spend in-game I was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of random interaction with GMs.  Stuff like, "hay guys!  Wanna see an event we've been workin on for a bit?  Check out Silverwind."  A bit later in the evening:  "uhhhh, we suggest you take care of the army we now have approaching Argent Glade."  And so on.  Yah, some of the time these were simply neglected Rifts that gained a foothold, but many times it was simply a GM pushing a button.  That to me is why I'll play this game.  You could have an uber-raid of twinked badasses roaming the map and a GM could pop in and drop the whoopass on you just when you thought you had the game min-maxed to the hilt.

[Sky]

To me it seems like you're saying "who cares if the game is grindy and dull, we just do it to ding anyway"

It's Draegan. That's how he do. Straight to level cap, no mix, no chaser. To be fair, he represents a significant portion of mmo players, whether others of us roll our eyes or not 

[Draegan]

Not if you get her interested in the game.

She's far from being a gamer. Far far far.

[Draegan]

To me it seems like you're saying "who cares if the game is grindy and dull, we just do it to ding anyway"

It's Draegan. That's how he do. Straight to level cap, no mix, no chaser. To be fair, he represents a significant portion of mmo players, whether others of us roll our eyes or not 

I hate leveling.  I like character progression when my character has their full toolbox of abilities and points.  Essentially I would prefer a game that was all about gear progression through story telling and other group/solo activities.

[Hawkbit]

I'm available a lot more for the next event.  I'll get on TS this time and roll up where F13 will be.  

I'm officially drinking the koolaid.  

While I do feel that the quest hub system is dated, the lore and rifts make up for it.  

If there's no official F13 guild when this goes live, I'll likely look to join Draegan's guild.  

Well done.

No guild this time!  I don't have enough time like with Aion.  Having a faincee and soon to be wife kind of nixes that idea.

Doh, sorry.  I thought you were running a guild off your RJ site. 

[Shatter]

To me it seems like you're saying "who cares if the game is grindy and dull, we just do it to ding anyway"

It's Draegan. That's how he do. Straight to level cap, no mix, no chaser. To be fair, he represents a significant portion of mmo players, whether others of us roll our eyes or not 

I hate leveling.  I like character progression when my character has their full toolbox of abilities and points.  Essentially I would prefer a game that was all about gear progression through story telling and other group/solo activities.

Should I interpret "character progression" as gearing?  If you dont have to level a character and have all their abilities to start with that leaves...achievements?  What do you mean by character progression specifically?

[Draegan]

I hate leveling.  I like character progression when my character has their full toolbox of abilities and points.  Essentially I would prefer a game that was all about gear progression through story telling and other group/solo activities.

Should I interpret "character progression" as gearing?  If you dont have to level a character and have all their abilities to start with that leaves...achievements?  What do you mean by character progression specifically?

Gearing.  Moving your way through a story/dungeons/raids/zones/whatever becoming more powerful.  That's just on a very simple level.  Gear wouldn't simply be +gooderer stats.  I'd toss out Diablo style loots so gear just rains down on you.  Run through content trying to get those really rare items.  Also toss in plenty of gear/gems/enchants/augments that alter your abilities in some way.  Your heal now gets a HOT.  Your DD now gets a DOT!  Ability X is now an AOE.  That type of stuff.

Essentially in my perfect world, I would condense the leveling portion of the game down to no more than 20 hours of played time at the most.  My perfect time would be somewhere between 5-10 hours (essentially an extended tutorial).  You quickly gain levels and you create a system that allows for a quick learning curve.  So imagine playing Rift where after 5-10 hours of play time you gain all the souls and get the full compliment of soul points.  You then enter the world some gear and you now the devs are free to create a world based on story and dungeons and crawls and don't have to worry about leveling curves and how many collect 10 bear asses it takes to get to from level 34 to 35 and how your content is being paced.

Essentially all the content is gated by character power.  You have to gear up in each area before doing dungeons/stories in the next.  Or you can be a douchebag and key everything based off of quests or accomplishments.

Ok that's enough armchair deving right now.

[Draegan]

No guild this time!  I don't have enough time like with Aion.  Having a faincee and soon to be wife kind of nixes that idea.

Doh, sorry.  I thought you were running a guild off your RJ site. 

Heh, If I had the time I would.  But I don't have time for running a fansite and running a guild.

[Xilren's Twin]

I didnt get to play the first event but tried out the second and I'll echo the thoughts of many I have seen here.  The similarity to WoW will make it easy for current players to jump in and hit the ground running, but the do it yourself, change on the fly class design with the souls plus the rifts themselves are the hooks aimed to keep them.  I do agree that this game will actually be probably a little overwhelming to a brand new MMO player; there is so much stuff from the very beginning that it could definately be confusing.  Consider, by level 7-8 you had multiple souls and a bunch of abilities, probably some green gear, up to 3 crafting path choices to make, lots of quest done or in the works, some acheivements earned, some collections started, some faction points earned, and some artifact peices collected (which i still need to go look up and see what those are actually for).   Oh yeah and a rift just spawned right next to you.  Pay attention boy, there is a lot going on.

Definately seems quite stable and polished; i saw no bugs, missing systems, or other problems during the entire event which was pretty impressive.  Lots of nice little touches (rare named mobs always drop something, shared quest objective completions even when not grouped if in the immediate area, being able to click on the usable item on the quest line row rather than drag it to your hotbar, hp/mana regen rates, self heal stuff, graphics, etc)

Im going to let my kids check it out this next event; my one son plays WoW in spurts when there's something "new" and had his goblin DK 85 2 days after after getting Cata.  I expect by the time Rifts is released he'll be ready for another break from WoW to play for at least a few months.

On the whole, i think it will do well and will keep participating in the beta to see more.

[Lantyssa]

I like the focus on quality of life stuff.  A lot of little things add up into an enjoyable experience.  I had a hell of a time convincing anyone of that in my MUD days because they'd rather have worked on some grandiose project.

[Ratman_tf]

Who reads quest text?  Really?

Hi!

Forsooth! I hast lost mine bauble. Praps the moose over yonder hast consumed it. Verily, if thou diggest through the moose turds, thou masyest find mine bauble for me.

[Modern Angel]

The fundamental tension is going to be between the mediocre quests and the (imo) great rift mechanic. If the rifts are good enough to smooth the quest design in your mind you'll have a good time. I think that's the case for me. And moving forward switching up writers and designers on quests is a lot easier than cooking up fundamental design directions.

[sam, an eggplant]

I'm obviously not in the beta. Didn't even apply until today, this one passed me right by. You all say the quests are pretty standard kill those dudes and collect 10 bear asses, which is a bummer, but are they wrapped in scripts, cutscenes, and custom events like the latter WoW expansions?

In WoW's evolution of these simple diku tasks you're still asked to kill 10 bears, but you get a hilariously incompetent companion to help out with funny little quips and whatnot. Or you're sent to collect 7 dragon eggs off the ground, and after you pick up each one a nearby dragon attacks, but then when you hand them in to the questgiver you're rewarded with a little in-game cutscene as they're purified, and the entire thing is part of a series of quests that leads to a showdown with the big bad foozle of the entire expansion.

The base mechanics are of course unchanged. You're picking shit off the ground and killing 10 mobs to collect their asses. That's all undeniably true. Thing is, WoW wraps so much stuff around these simple kill/fetch quests that they're still enjoyable the first time you do them, even for someone totally burned out on dikus like me.

Now if it's "collect me 10 bear asses" and that's it, he provides a breadcrumb to the next vaguely related questgiver, that sucks. I don't see how they could do that and hope to compete with WoW, because blizzard has been doing it better since 2008.

[Modern Angel]

These are vanilla WoW style quests. No frills. The difference comes in the rift mechanics.

I would add that the new WoW questing comes with a huge side of railroading and on rails, gated by quest bottlenecks. It works great at lower levels where it's extremely rapid fire and on the move. The 80-85 stuff made me want to stab my eyes out. So, as I stated in one of our WoW threads, if you have diku quest grind games as the constant new normal you then have two ways to go:

1) Heavy storyline, heavy cinematic, focused and less open questing. New WoW and it looks like KOTORO
2) Some dynamic content to alleviate the standard quest grind, potentially with some borderline emergent behavior. Rift and GW2

Either way you're spending the bulk of your time quest grinding, no matter how it's disguised. It just depends on which of those two you want. I want number two more than I want one, having just done one.