Rift: Planes of Telara

[Kageru]

Let's see how the character system survives the launch process. In beta both the player and the developer take comfort from the fact that the character is a impermanent one-off. When it launches exploits. player determination of optimal builds and pariah classes will determine how successful they've been.

[Ratama]

You get a SHITTON more variety/character; less mandatory alts to explore all the character possibilities will be a plus for most potential subs, I'm sure.

But more variety overall?  You could argue it's less, actually.  

For example, WoW has at least one competitive DPS spec/class.

Will Trion work to keep multiple builds/class optimal for competitive PvE DPS?  And if so, are they actually capable of pulling it off?  Previous efforts by members of their team indicate the negative.

PvP Souls will be a problem, too; there are only going to be a handful of viable PvP builds/class, if that, thanks to mandatory PvP talents (via PvP souls mostly, with a few exceptions).

There are 4 classes, with 3 spec lines you get to choose out of 8 possibilities for each class.  

And with each new beta phase, less and less options remain viable (more and more talents keep changing from generic % bonuses, to proprietary bonuses to that tree's abilities only, for instance).  Still better customization than, say, WoW, but each patch keeps bringing it down closer and closer to WoW's level.

I honestly wouldn't recommend this to anyone based on vastly superior character customization anymore.

Quite wrong there.

How so?

[Draegan]

First: Beta 5 Patch Notes

A lot of great stuff there.  A lot.

There are 4 classes, with 3 spec lines you get to choose out of 8 possibilities for each class.  

And with each new beta phase, less and less options remain viable (more and more talents keep changing from generic % bonuses, to proprietary bonuses to that tree's abilities only, for instance).  Still better customization than, say, WoW, but each patch keeps bringing it down closer and closer to WoW's level.

I honestly wouldn't recommend this to anyone based on vastly superior character customization anymore.

Quite wrong there.

How so?

I'm not sure where you're getting less and less options are remaining viable, especially since we only have access to the first 27 levels of the game.  Some builds are only viable if they have enough points to spread around.  And the % bonus being proprietary isn't the case either.  If anything it's loosening up.

For example:

* Blazing Fury: Functionality changed. It now increases the damage of all combo point generating abilities by 3-15%.
* Unstable State, Heat Retention: Now increases the damage of non-physical attacks instead of just Fire and Death attacks.

Night Blade buff went from a specific fire and death damage buff to now increasing damage across the board so now it's more viable to use with other souls since Night Blade was the only rogue soul to use fire and death damaging abilities.

[Ghambit]

Public Grouping seriously swings the balance into the PCs favor when defending against rifts/invasions.  Hopefully this quiets the people screaming for an invasion nerf.

[Ratama]

I'm not sure where you're getting less and less options are remaining viable, especially since we only have access to the first 27 levels of the game.  Some builds are only viable if they have enough points to spread around.

It actually gets worse at higher levels; but already many builds already have to put 'dead' points into trees to get stuff that actually affects abilities they use.

Paragon is a good example; a DPS Riftblade might put 6 points into it for the crit self-buff and the mandatory SLI... and literally not get any benifit from the actual talent points.*

*For folks curious about that last bit; Riftblades use Elemental attacks.  The first two talents in the Paragon tree you have to choose from are a bonus to physical damage specials... and Parry (in a DPS talent tree).  And yes, you need to put those 6 points in for an optimal PvE DPS build.

And the % bonus being proprietary isn't the case either.  If anything it's loosening up.

For example:

* Blazing Fury: Functionality changed. It now increases the damage of all combo point generating abilities by 3-15%.
* Unstable State, Heat Retention: Now increases the damage of non-physical attacks instead of just Fire and Death attacks.

Night Blade buff went from a specific fire and death damage buff to now increasing damage across the board so now it's more viable to use with other souls since Night Blade was the only rogue soul to use fire and death damaging abilities.

Your 'example' is literally the only such change in the patch notes that I saw (I guess we'll see if there is an undocumented shift back towards generalization).

But for the past few patches, more and more Soul talents were changed from general bonuses to specific self-proprietary bonuses.  Several roles in some classes (melee-healing Clerics, for instance), are looking at losing a significant % of their lvl 50 points into suboptimal talents.

[Draegan]

Not all souls are strictly for dps or tanking.  Some talents are put in there to augment tanking, survivability, solo, or even PVP.  For example the Blade Dancer gives boosts to dodge and parry which are amazing for tanking and solo play.  Yet they also have a portion of their tree that's dedicated to dps.

The assassin tree has all boosts to physical damage.  The Inquisitor/Cabalist tree all boost death damage.  Shaman/Druid all boost critical and physical attacks.  Mages have synergy as well.

Are there souls that don't work well together or stand out alone with less synergy?  Sure.  They've been slowly fixing that though.  Generally?  There's is a lot of mixing and matching.

The only large un-synergy change is the Justicar/Sentinel/Inquisitor builds. They nerfed light damage/wisdom/spellpower synergy across the board.

[Ratama]

... You realize your post largely points out exactly what I was saying, right?

There's only a talent tree or two per class that will have what you need to prop up your main spec's role/abilities.

Ideally = You pick one or two main souls to focus on, and have the freedom to mix/match from the other 6-7 souls as you see fit without gimping yourself.

Reality = You only get 2-3 Souls per Class for a given role to pick from in the first place, and you can only put points into those souls without gimping the shit out of yourself.

Much closer to WoW than Character Customization Utopia.

[Hawkbit]

Wow, those are strong patch notes.  They got a lot done in a few weeks.  Currency tab, woohoo!

Getting really excited for this game to go live.

[Shatter]

The rogue regen is a welcome change.  These guys need to spit out their own soul / talent calculators and update them with patch note releases.

[Modern Angel]

Public Grouping seriously swings the balance into the PCs favor when defending against rifts/invasions.  Hopefully this quiets the people screaming for an invasion nerf.

There was an invasion nerf. Read closely.

[Lantyssa]

Reality = You only get 2-3 Souls per Class for a given role to pick from in the first place, and you can only put points into those souls without gimping the shit out of yourself.

Much closer to WoW than Character Customization Utopia.

Good.  I like systems where you have the possibility of gimping yourself, because it means they don't make the decisions for me.  Which isn't a thing like WoW, where you have almost no flexibility now.

[Falconeer]

... You realize your post largely points out exactly what I was saying, right?

There's only a talent tree or two per class that will have what you need to prop up your main spec's role/abilities.

Ideally = You pick one or two main souls to focus on, and have the freedom to mix/match from the other 6-7 souls as you see fit without gimping yourself.

Reality = You only get 2-3 Souls per Class for a given role to pick from in the first place, and you can only put points into those souls without gimping the shit out of yourself.

Much closer to WoW than Character Customization Utopia.

What I said is that you really have 32 completely different classes to play with (highest number ever in a DIKU? check?), and that is absolutely true. More, it's absolutely true that you can mix them for a crazy high number of hybrids. The "only a few are viable" argument, which is a stretch when you have a capped beta and patches that keep tuning numbers, doesn't change the fact that for every soul you equip your character changes completely.

When I say "you have 32 truly different classes to play, switch on the fly, and combine for an amazing number of combinations" I am stating a fact that is interesting and brilliant to anyone who is not a powerplayer, and celebrating the one achievement that cannot be taken away from this game. The fact that eventually, to "win the game" (ie: beat every dungeon as quickly as possible), you will have to go for a way less amazing number of builds doesn't take anything from the fact that this game is much closer to Character Customization Utopia than WoW.

Simply put, even if you decided to max out a soul, you would have some spare points to spend on a secondary/tertiary soul. Even assuming those sec/ter ones are fixed/mandatory, you'd still have 32 unique classes. Still amazing. And the system is more than that.

[Falconeer]

Reality = You only get 2-3 Souls per Class for a given role to pick from in the first place, and you can only put points into those souls without gimping the shit out of yourself.

Much closer to WoW than Character Customization Utopia.

Good.  I like systems where you have the possibility of gimping yourself, because it means they don't make the decisions for me.  Which isn't a thing like WoW, where you have almost no flexibility now.

Exactly.
Not to mention that you aren't really gimping yourself for good. You have 4 memorized sets of souls that you can change whenever you want (and that you can EVEN reset/respec). Let's assume EVERYONE has one slot dedicated to the uber viable build needed to do dungeons without being yelled at, nothing stops you from memorizing 3 "gimped" builds in the other slots just because you like the visuals of one of the other 7, or just because you like a different playstyle, or just because you want to try something new, change the pace, adapt to different mobs, etc. That's what I was talking about: having fun without being on rails. This game offers a lot of that.

[Nebu]

Let's assume EVERYONE has one slot dedicated to the uber viable build needed to do dungeons without being yelled at...

If one "preferred" build exists for any of the 4 major lines, then this game has failed miserably.  You can't sell a game on variety and versatility and then screw up balance to make one build notably better.  The only point to having many options is that they offer equal but different playstyle.  When different is no longer equal, than the options are merely an illusion to anyone interested in being involved with all of the title's content.

[Draegan]

... You realize your post largely points out exactly what I was saying, right?

There's only a talent tree or two per class that will have what you need to prop up your main spec's role/abilities.

Ideally = You pick one or two main souls to focus on, and have the freedom to mix/match from the other 6-7 souls as you see fit without gimping yourself.

Reality = You only get 2-3 Souls per Class for a given role to pick from in the first place, and you can only put points into those souls without gimping the shit out of yourself.

Much closer to WoW than Character Customization Utopia.

That happens in certain situations but not the majority of them.  You get pigeon holed into 3-4 souls when you're a pure healer or tank.  There are other situations that vary though.  But there is incredible variety in each calling in many situations, and the greatest variance is with dps.

My recent beta experience with a Chloromancer is limited due to build points, but I did main heal Darkening Deeps and Realm of the Fae with him.  Once you put a certain amount of points into the Chloromancer you can start bridging out though.  And there are some planned builds where you can go light Chloro and spec into heavy AE with a Stormcaller.  This essentially helps the group plow through trash while you're healing at the same time.  Then you can switch to a full heal spec for bosses.  You can create situational builds for any type of dungeon encounter.

Other examples are, Rift Stalker and Blade Dancer.  Both souls, from the surface, look like tank souls or tank assisting souls, but you can also use them for DPS due to crit and stat boosts.  If you want to Rogue-Tank?  Yeah then you're pigeon holed into a certain build.  But you're offered freedom in the dps department.  As a warrior?  You have a lot of buffing, dps, dps/buffing builds that I can see.  You also have plenty of different tank builds.  For Mages, outside Chloromancer there appears to be buffing and debuffing builds, aoe builds, single target builds.  Clerics seem a bit more convoluted since they are attempting to squeeze in Tanking, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, and 3 Healing Styles into 8 souls and the souls seem very separate from each other.

However I don't seem them trending away from synergy, I see them trending towards it except for a few instances.

[Threash]

Let's assume EVERYONE has one slot dedicated to the uber viable build needed to do dungeons without being yelled at...

If one "preferred" build exists for any of the 4 major lines

Unless they make every single soul exactly the same one build is always going to mathematically do more dps, one build is always going to be able to heal better, one build is going to be the best tank.  This is impossible to change without completely homogenizing the classes.  I am disappointed there is no kelari racial nerf on those patch notes, guilds continue to flock to the defiant side and if something doesn't change soon it might already be too late to have balanced sides.  Hopefully they do what Aion did and enforce balance with character creation restrictions, it might have pissed people off but it freaking worked while they did it.

[Nebu]

Best tank, best dps, and best heals would be 3 builds.  Why have 8 for each line when the game will eventually devolve into these three for each of the 4 main classes?  I understand variety, but if you want to give players choices, then (using warrior as an example) a dual weilder, a 2H weilder, and a hybrid magic/tank should all have the same max dps when played properly.  This is a significant undertaking when you consider cooldowns, gear, resistances, etc.  If the Rifts team can pull it off, I will be impressed... I'm just not optimistic.

[Modern Angel]

The racial rebalancing is incoming. Just didn't make it to this patch. I think you can rest easy that the Kelari racial will be redone.

[Falconeer]

I am starting to see why we can't communicate here.
You people don't seem to consider soloers.

About groups, I'll just say that should the whole system be reduced to 5 preferred lines for grouping (best tank, best melee dps, best ranged dps, healer, buffer) it would be fail but at the moment there seems to be lots of desire for that fail to happen more than actual facts or reasons to support such a concern.

[Nebu]

About groups, I'll just say that should the whole system be reduced to 5 preferred lines for grouping (best tank, best melee dps, best ranged dps, healer, buffer) it would be fail but at the moment there seems to be lots of desire for that fail to happen more than actual facts or reasons to support such a concern.

I don't want fail, I've just become really used to getting it.  MMOs release all the time with the illusion of choice.  I invariably choose the "cool" looking hybrid class (read: build) only to discover that I suck compared to some cookie-cutter spec.  In other words, by exercising a choice presented to me in game, I've become a second class citizen of the game and am forced to reroll (respec) so that I can see all of the content.  The case can be made even more strongly in games with pvp as you are forced to min-max to avoid being immediately at a disadvantage from the start of a conflict. 

If you're going to give me build choices, make them different but equal.  Is that really wanting so much?

[Draegan]

Best tank, best dps, and best heals would be 3 builds.  Why have 8 for each line when the game will eventually devolve into these three for each of the 4 main classes?  I understand variety, but if you want to give players choices, then (using warrior as an example) a dual weilder, a 2H weilder, and a hybrid magic/tank should all have the same max dps when played properly.  This is a significant undertaking when you consider cooldowns, gear, resistances, etc.  If the Rifts team can pull it off, I will be impressed... I'm just not optimistic.

Without end game number to reference there is nothing but speculation to see if there will be only one dps build or GTFO for raids.

I am starting to see why we can't communicate here.
You people don't seem to consider soloers.

I agree.  There are some very cool builds that you can potentially make that can be used for ganking/pvp/small group pvp/farming/leveling etc.

[Shatter]

I can't imagine the amount of soul / class tweaking they will do the first 6 months.  The beta 5 patch notes even has a 1 class/soul overhaul and some changes to the majority of each class.  Its expected that racials will get an overhaul before live since defiant are offensive and guardian are defensive.  I expect soon after launch the cries for nerfs on x class / x,y,z class combinations will come and how much they will respond to those cries will be popcorn worthy.  

[Nebu]

Without end game number to reference there is nothing but speculation to see if there will be only one dps build or GTFO for raids.

Which is why I said...

If the Rifts team can pull it off, I will be impressed... I'm just not optimistic.

[Sky]

I'm sure Draegan's opinion is unbiased.

[Modern Angel]

I don't give two damns what people do while they're soloing or PvP. But if you come into a group with 22 points in each tree because you want to go crazy snowflake build you're getting kicked, no questions asked. It is flexible, it is more flexible than WoW, no you do not design your own classes from the ground up. That doesn't lessen the enjoyment for me; I'm a huge fan of this game. But let's not make it something it's not. It's not UO flexibility in a diku mllieu.

[Murgos]

I don't give two damns what people do while they're soloing or PvP. But if you come into a group with 22 points in each tree because you want to go crazy snowflake build you're getting kicked, no questions asked.

Except for the whole, "you can switch builds with a single mouse click thing" you might have had a point.

[Typhon]

[snip!]
If you're going to give me build choices, make them different but equal.  Is that really wanting so much?

It's proved to be very difficult by every game that included specialists and hybrids; EQ, DAOC, WoW... it took WoW five years to come around to the idea that Druids should be able to tank or dps or heal and differentiate classes based upon the off-role things they do, or the way they do their role things rather then numerically.  I think it's hard.  I think throwing the annoyance of player perspective on top of that just makes it worse.

I think the GW folks have the right idea - everyone can heal, everyone does damage.  Making everyone a hybrid makes balancing easier because everyone has access to the same (similar) healing capabilities so the balance is simplified to balancing damage output, mitigation and crowd control (which is really just a different form of mitigation).  (course, that's just me speculating on how GW healing works)

[Draegan]

I'm sure Draegan's opinion is unbiased.

Which opinion is that? 

[Nebu]

Are builds and gear going to be publicly viewable in Rifts?  Has this been announced yet?  Things like gearscore really ruined WoW for me.  I'd rather not get invested in a game with a similar mechanic again.

[Modern Angel]

Of course they are. There won't be a Gearscore situation because they're not going to be allowing extensive mods (and zero mods at release) but why wouldn't you be inspectable? Especially in a game where only class (cleric, rogue, warrior, mage) shows up on mouseover and not role.

[Draegan]

Outside the game, like an armory?  Nothing has been mentioned.

You can inspect people in game of course.  According to the patch notes your role will be displayed in group/raid frames via coloring.  So people will see if you're a tank or healer or whatever.

[Lantyssa]

I don't give two damns what people do while they're soloing or PvP. But if you come into a group with 22 points in each tree because you want to go crazy snowflake build you're getting kicked, no questions asked.

Except for the whole, "you can switch builds with a single mouse click thing" you might have had a point.

Or that there are more abilities granted in the first half of the trees, including nice passives, than the latter half.  Specs can be viable by splitting or by concentrating.

[rattran]

Talking about viable specs at endgame is either NDA breaking, or pointless faffling with nothing to back you up. Either is a bad thing.

[Modern Angel]

or pointless faffling with nothing to back you up. Either is a bad thing.

So we're shutting down the SWTOR thread?

[Draegan]

So we're not allowed to speculate?