Rift: Planes of Telara

[Ingmar]

Class system is nigh-incomprehensible and will utterly mystify anyone who's not already a hardened MMO geek. Lore suffers from way too much "After the Tururrhbjbhsrf Civl War, the forces of Foghdjhsd learned to harness the power of Lowdfihsfhjk!" type stuff. Unless you've taken ten years and three games plus expansions to establish and build up your lore (like you know who) you need to keep that shit simple.

Yeah I tend to agree, especially on the lore thing. The way Guild Wars handles that stuff is basically perfect. Introduce just one country/town/whatever at a time, give you a few strong personalities to attach to, then slowly do the loredump of everything else. This looks much too busy at first glance but it might be OK if they structure the new player experience right.

[Sky]

Wait, WUA doesn't like it? It's going to be a huge hit!

[WindupAtheist]

Oh, I'm still basically on board, what with the whole sandboxy dynamic evolving world thing. And nobody but me and the rest of a crazy 1% of players even notices lore anyway. But I've been doing a lot of newb-helping lately in my WoW guild, and it just makes me aware of the fact that this class system may as well be in Sanskrit for all the people who just fill out their trees with whatever until I pull a viable spec off EJ and send it to them because they're crying about getting kicked from groups.

[Lantyssa]

I'm okay with that, since the only way to make this class system better in my opinion would be to not restrict the mage/cleric/warrior/rogue sub-specs to whichever you picked first.

[Hawkbit]

That would make for a balancing nightmare... the possibilities would be endless.  Pretty well guarantees everyone takes a rank of priest.  :)

[jakonovski]

Balancing (for PvP) is doable if they adopt a build-counterbuild philosophy, kind of like in M:tG. Then it becomes mostly a matter of metagaming correctly, and uncounterable things stand out immediately.

[Segoris]

Bump for a couple of post-PAX write ups
Massively, not that great imo but there is a couple of good bits there

Horrifticintentions blog day 1
Horrifticintentions blog day 2
Good guild info from the day 1 blog:

Curse's Q&A

Best one, imo, came from AutomaticZen. Great job on a solid write up.

[AutomaticZen]

Best one, imo, came from AutomaticZen. Great job on a solid write up.

Gracias, senor.

[Hawkbit]

I suspect that my next PC upgrade is going to coincide with this game launch. 

[Sky]

Thanks for the write-up, AZ. I'm jealous (though honestly I'd rather play something like this that I'm looking forward to as a finished product, heh).

[Draegan]

I'm on mys phone right now, but if you head over to rift podcpast.com they have two part interview with russ brown.  Its pretty good.

[Bunk]

I watched some of this at PAX without actually playing it, and at the moment I'm cautiously optomistic. Graphically, the first thing that came to mind was "garrish". There was a hell of a lot going on on the screen during combat.

Guess I'll find out more in the beta.

[Hawkbit]

I'm interested in how they're planning to balance the multitude of options while building classes. 

I also am interested in the fact that WoW found their talent trees to be too in-depth with too many filler talents, so they scaled them back.  Yet Telara seems to be embracing those filler talents to flesh out their trees.  The whole concept of 'concentrated cool' seems lost. 

People like my dad who enjoy playing WoW, so slightly less dps than the rest of the party, and don't spend endless hours (or any, for that matter) reading about specs are going to be lost in a min/max world with the amount of options. 

[ghost]

I'm interested in how they're planning to balance the multitude of options while building classes. 

It might end up a little bit like Eve, in which there are viable options and not-so-viable options, even though there are innumerable different permutations. 

[Segoris]

No matter what there will eventually be a "preferred spec," but allowing respecs on the fly and multiple preset builds will help with when the devs make adjustments and fine tuning of abilities not as bad as when something gets nerfed in other games. I have to look back, but I believe it was Hartsman who recognized that there will be balancing issues, but that is something that will have to be dealt with as the issues arise. Perhaps Draegan or someone else remembers a statement along those line?

Edit: A quick google-fu chop has brought this up

[Threash]

I'm not sure if "balance? fuck balance" is the way to go.

[Chimpy]

I'm not sure if "balance? fuck balance" is the way to go.

I don't think he is saying "fuck balance" what I got from that is that is it impossible to get 100% balanced and previous games all took the tack of "must rebalance class X" which then made "class Y" considerably worse/better than they had been, etc.

It sounds like they are trying to balance the game in a more situational fashion and making it possible to re-adjust depending on situation.

No system will ever be perfect, but I think giving people the flexibility they are talking about for this game is more promising than other systems. It has the feeling of making your character fit into different actual classes as you see the need/have the desire instead of being locked into your original choice 40-50 levels later.

[Murgos]

I'm not sure if "balance? fuck balance" is the way to go.

Honestly?  Balance in a PVE game is nothing more than a cause celeb for whiners to complain about someone else having fun and not playing the game 'right' (i.e. their way).  Fuck balance, just make it fun.

[Rendakor]

Fuck balance, just make it fun.

This.

[Threash]

I'm not sure if "balance? fuck balance" is the way to go.

Honestly?  Balance in a PVE game is nothing more than a cause celeb for whiners to complain about someone else having fun and not playing the game 'right' (i.e. their way).  Fuck balance, just make it fun.

Is this in fact a pve game? 

[Rendakor]

All the hype so far has been about PQs and dungeons (aside from the class system) so I assumed it was. The official FAQ only states that PVP will exist in some form.

[Draegan]

I'm interested in how they're planning to balance the multitude of options while building classes.  

I also am interested in the fact that WoW found their talent trees to be too in-depth with too many filler talents, so they scaled them back.  Yet Telara seems to be embracing those filler talents to flesh out their trees.  The whole concept of 'concentrated cool' seems lost.  

People like my dad who enjoy playing WoW, so slightly less dps than the rest of the party, and don't spend endless hours (or any, for that matter) reading about specs are going to be lost in a min/max world with the amount of options.  

Edit: Segoris got it.

Threash:
From what has been explained, it's pretty much WOW without Arenas.  PVE/PVP servers and battlegrounds.  Maybe some objectives in the world via rifts for PVP?  The only PVP specifically mentioned is the battlegrounds (warfronts) and of course open world PVP on PVP servers.

[Lantyssa]

I also am interested in the fact that WoW found their talent trees to be too in-depth with too many filler talents, so they scaled them back.  Yet Telara seems to be embracing those filler talents to flesh out their trees.  The whole concept of 'concentrated cool' seems lost. 

I think Blizzard found they promised the moon, hyped its awesomeness for a year, revealed trees nearly identical to what existed, got flamed for it, then realized redesigning 30 talent trees in a week to live up to their promises is hard.

[Threash]

I also am interested in the fact that WoW found their talent trees to be too in-depth with too many filler talents, so they scaled them back.  Yet Telara seems to be embracing those filler talents to flesh out their trees.  The whole concept of 'concentrated cool' seems lost. 

I think Blizzard found they promised the moon, hyped its awesomeness for a year, revealed trees nearly identical to what existed, got flamed for it, then realized redesigning 30 talent trees in a week to live up to their promises is hard.

Not to mention the fact that if you simply keep expanding the trees every time the level cap goes up you end up with people being able to reach talents in different trees that were never meant to be available together.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm okay with that, since the only way to make this class system better in my opinion would be to not restrict the mage/cleric/warrior/rogue sub-specs to whichever you picked first.

They just need to do away with classes altogether, or to put it another way, have only one class but let it potentially pick from all the trees. Then just watch what happens and balance things on the fly. Oh, but that would be lots of work. Blizzard's model of balance isn't? They rebuild paladins from the ground up with every damn expansion.

[Hawkbit]

Got to say, that would be awesome. 

I'll take a fire mage, disc priest, blood DK class.  Mmmm.

[Hartsman]

Best one, imo, came from AutomaticZen. Great job on a solid write up.

Gracias, senor.

And, good meeting ya. :)

[HorRIFTic]

Greetings Mr. Hartsman.  Nice to see you responding on unofficial forums as well.

This is my first post here, I found the place thanks to a referrer from my Rift blog, HorRIFTic Intentions.  It is great to see Rift slowly but surely building solid word of mouth and interest.  It is still nowhere near the hype level of SW:ToR or GW2 but I think that is a good thing.

One of the first things that caught my attention with Rift is the Soul System.  It reminds me, in many ways, of the old Magic: The Gathering card game.  Find something that you can not defeat with your current deck's color, you simply change the color and try again.  Same with the soul system.  If your current spec is not working, just change it out and try once more.  It adds freedom and a tactical aspect not present in most other MMOs.

Thanks for linking to HorRIFTic, I hope you don't mind if I stick around a bit! 

[AutomaticZen]

And, good meeting ya. :)

Indeed it was sir.  You and your knee of steel.

[Lantyssa]

Look out, Sky!  You've got competition...

[Segoris]

I think Sky's been beat already since he only starfucks on his own turf, afaik 

[NiX]

I hope this doesn't turn into WAR.

[HorRIFTic]

I'm interested in how they're planning to balance the multitude of options while building classes.  

I also am interested in the fact that WoW found their talent trees to be too in-depth with too many filler talents, so they scaled them back.  Yet Telara seems to be embracing those filler talents to flesh out their trees.  The whole concept of 'concentrated cool' seems lost.  

People like my dad who enjoy playing WoW, so slightly less dps than the rest of the party, and don't spend endless hours (or any, for that matter) reading about specs are going to be lost in a min/max world with the amount of options.  

Edit: Segoris got it.



Threash:
From what has been explained, it's pretty much WOW without Arenas.  PVE/PVP servers and battlegrounds.  Maybe some objectives in the world via rifts for PVP?  The only PVP specifically mentioned is the battlegrounds (warfronts) and of course open world PVP on PVP servers.

Don't forget Port Scion, which has been mentioned as an open World warzone.  Not much information than that but it looks like a large zone that will be PvP both on PvP and PvE servers.

[schild]

I hope this doesn't turn into WAR.

It won't.

[jayfyve]

Excitement for this game is rising steadily for me. Trying to entice my current online circle into checking it out.


Is it just me, or are most of the developers in the vids bald? (not that there is anything wrong with that!)