Rift: Planes of Telara

[UnSub]

This is exactly why Rifts won't work for most people.  The opportunity to kill an invasion instead of grind more quests sounds like a great change of pace to me in theory, but it seems like people just get cranky because it interrupts their boar farming.

CoH/V had the same problem with the Rikti invasion - it would send other mobs running indoors (i.e. off map) which was a great effect... but after the novelty wore off you'd have players complain that they'd have to wait around doing nothing for 10 minutes until the invasion passed in order to keep going with a kill X of Y outdoor mission.

Players want the world to change, but they want to not be changed with it if it doesn't suit them.

[Modern Angel]

I didn't have any issues questing up to 20 in prior betas Defiant side. Flowed pretty well though I don't like the starter zone as much as the Guardian one.

I think they have the invasions cranked up to 11 last night to fiddle with it. Kelari Refuge was practically camped. It was much better today, with the invasions coming more sporadically. The problem, and I've posted about it elsewhere but I'll repeat here because I think it's a BIG potential problem, is that the patrols that do the invading are wildly overtuned. You're looking at one elite captain guy and five or six elite troops. All of them hit like trucks and four or five people can have lots of trouble taking a hub back if it's one of the heftier patrols that take it over.

There is no reason, I repeat NO REASON, to have all those guys as elites. Seven normal guys is not soloable. There's no danger in removing the elite status that suddenly solo players are going to ruin the flow of the invasions. There were a lot of people kvetching about it last night, most of them very stoked at the invasions and rifts but not at all into the five to seven mobs tearing ass across the quest hubs.

[Ghambit]

I didn't have any issues questing up to 20 in prior betas Defiant side. Flowed pretty well though I don't like the starter zone as much as the Guardian one.

I think they have the invasions cranked up to 11 last night to fiddle with it. Kelari Refuge was practically camped. It was much better today, with the invasions coming more sporadically. The problem, and I've posted about it elsewhere but I'll repeat here because I think it's a BIG potential problem, is that the patrols that do the invading are wildly overtuned. You're looking at one elite captain guy and five or six elite troops. All of them hit like trucks and four or five people can have lots of trouble taking a hub back if it's one of the heftier patrols that take it over.

There is no reason, I repeat NO REASON, to have all those guys as elites. Seven normal guys is not soloable. There's no danger in removing the elite status that suddenly solo players are going to ruin the flow of the invasions. There were a lot of people kvetching about it last night, most of them very stoked at the invasions and rifts but not at all into the five to seven mobs tearing ass across the quest hubs.

This kind of nerdrage is exactly the kind that Hartsman should be lookin for.  It evokes distress, difficulty, and tension.  All which lead to better game mechanics.  One might pretend they dont like it, but in the end it's what keeps the belly full.

Who the fuck would want to just wipe their ass with mob patrols anyways??  I had enough of that in earlier betas and it's way worse than having to deal with some difficulty.  "On Rails" is for pussies.  Let Rift go the opposite direction...  then they might actually be able to say they're not simply a Clone.

[Modern Angel]

I have no idea what you just typed means.

[Malakili]

I have no idea what you just typed means.

He means the fact that it pisses you off is good because it means you care, if it were to be too easy to get rid of rifts they wouldn't even be worth having in the game, and you'd just get bored of questing the same old shit again.

Thats more or less what I read at least.

[Lantyssa]

In the later game that works, when someone is invested in it.  In the newbie zone it means they uninstall and go back to WoW.

The level difference also has way too large an impact at the beginning levels.  Invasions should use CoH's giant monster tech, where critters scale to whomever is fighting them.  Then people can participate regardless of level, they may just not be quite as effective and still unable to solo any force of decent size.

[Modern Angel]

I agree that the patrols were likely undertuned before. They're demonstrably, objectively overtuned now. It they're tuned such that even an optimized, full group can't reliably take a quest hub back then the game's fucked. I'm not nerdraging here; I love the game. But I was watching people try to finesse pull one or two of the mobs only to have the entire group come in and smear the whole group. I've been in those groups.

The rifts themselves, different matter. Major rifts can and should be hard as hell.

[Sky]

Did anyone get BC up and running?  I keep looking for Sky's cleric and never see it online. 

I got three names (of five needed) in beta 2, I got two names in beta three. I have no intention of playing this pvp-focused beta four.

[Hawkbit]

It's the same game as it was, just with PVP warfronts added.  You can still do all the stuff you were doing in 2 and 3, including waiting around for us for three days to sign the charter!     I actually like the Warfront that was offered (though it's pvp, if you don't like pvp you won't like this).  It feels more WAR scenario than WoW BG. 

Fwiw, the complaints above about rifts being unsoloable and wiping out quest hubs - that's exactly what is going to keep me playing RIFT over WoW.  If I want to quest, then I can either wait for the invasion to go through or I can put a group together and drive the invasion out.  In all of the betas putting a group/raid together has not been an issue, as long as one is willing to put forth effort to lead or follow another person. 

[Modern Angel]

I' m not sure where I'm being unclear here. I do not want invasions to be soloable. Nor do I want them to be unclearable by three to five people.

There needs to be a distinction in difficulty between rifts and invasions. Rifts should be big monstrosities that you get a group together to go close down. Invasions and patrols should be able to be handled by a few people working together. Right now if a hub gets attacked by an ALL ELITE patrol it fucks things entirely. That's going to piss off the noobies hardcore.

[kildorn]

The issue in the defiant zone at least is that it's 8 elites, one of which is typically an abyssal mender, which will proceed to fuck everyone the hell up, because it takes about eight people focus firing a single add to outdamage the incoming heals.

Anyways, I don't get the "screw grinding quests, I want rifts!" thing. Rifts are just grinding mobs with a guaranteed drop at the end of X mobs. With the occasional "total bullshit" mechanic that reminds me that this is a WoW rip: Melee that aren't tanks should NOT apply to fight the level 13 elite that has a pulsing 300-500 damage PBAE that will twoshot anything under level 2. Nothing says untuned mechanics like a fight that cannot be completed by melee characters!

Really, the whole thing strikes me as a great idea that needs another content pass (seriously, the quest chains just DIE in a few places due to mistuned level requirements, and it lacks WoW's friendly grey ! saying there are more things to do if you level and come back.. and a balance pass, because no you may not just go "hey, it's a complicated class system!" throw up your hands and pretend it's impossible to make the game fair so why bother.

Heck, it would be nice to just have some reasonable way to know what doesn't stack/shares cooldowns between souls.

[kildorn]

This kind of nerdrage is exactly the kind that Hartsman should be lookin for.  It evokes distress, difficulty, and tension.  All which lead to better game mechanics.  One might pretend they dont like it, but in the end it's what keeps the belly full.

What I got out of this "the way to be successful is to make players absolutely hate your game's mechanics"

What I got out of the current MMO market is "this is about as wrong as you can possibly be unless your target audience is EVE Online"

[Tarami]

Really, the whole thing strikes me as a great idea that needs another content pass (seriously, the quest chains just DIE in a few places due to mistuned level requirements, and it lacks WoW's friendly grey ! saying there are more things to do if you level and come back..

Actually, that's in, but I think it's only shown if the quest is a single level above you.

[kildorn]

Really, the whole thing strikes me as a great idea that needs another content pass (seriously, the quest chains just DIE in a few places due to mistuned level requirements, and it lacks WoW's friendly grey ! saying there are more things to do if you level and come back..

Actually, that's in, but I think it's only shown if the quest is a single level above you.

That seems a bit unforgiving, but would explain why I've never seen one. I've only seen grey check boxes if it's an incomplete quest.

[Tarami]

Unforgiving is the name of the game. A friend and I were just steamrolled by a patrol that spawned on top of us as we were closing a non-elite rift.

[Draegan]

Page one on the "things wow taught us five years ago" handbook: 8 second cast times for pets in pvp unfairly punish pet classes, stop making pets unsummon when dying in pvp.  Or at all really.

Necros, at least, have an ability for instant cast pet on something like a 30s cooldown.

On invasions/rfits and elites.  I agree they are overtuned right now.  Sometimes I just like plowing through 10 mobs solo.  It might have something to do with their dynamic system.  If they have X amount of people in the zone then you get more elites.  I think they'll have to tune that a bit.

I guess that's exactly what beta is for.

[Ratama]

Page one on the "things wow taught us five years ago"...

... Is a manual Trion folks don't read.

Which shouldn't be too surprising; some of them came from Mythic, and they specifically didn't want to learn from WoW's mistakes over there. 

Though, to be fair, it seems none of the MMOs released in the last few years learned much a damn thing from WoW.

[Threash]

I'm now level 18 and wearing a mix of level 4-10 gear.  This is silly, rift and pvp exp is wonderful but without the gear it is not a viable leveling method.  Remove all those utterly useless consumables you get as random rewards from rifts and stick quest reward appropriate for your class in there.  Also make sure the reward for the pvp daily quest can only drop an item useable by your class, and add a few more pvp daily quests that do the same.

[Modern Angel]

I got a piece of gear every third encounter or so. Doesn't help that the AH and crafters aren't really active due to it being a beta, though.

[Threash]

What encounters are you talking about?  I've been running around fighting rifts or doing battlefronts, gotten no upgrades at all from either.

[Modern Angel]

You'll get gear from rifts periodically in your reward bag. Or at least I was 100% sure you did until you said something. Now I might be crazy.

Incidentally, I was (again) pleasantly surprised by something, in this case crafted gear. Crafted gear in WoW is invariably way underpowered by the time you're able to craft it, at least at lower levels. The stuff in Rift may be nothing special and without a ton of variety but it's actually well itemized and the rate at which you're able to use it is very good.

[Threash]

You'll get gear from rifts periodically in your reward bag. Or at least I was 100% sure you did until you said something. Now I might be crazy.

You get gear in the random reward thingies, very very rarely and it is not tailored specifically for your class so chances of getting an upgrade are extremely low.

[Draegan]

They really need to increase the gear drop from rifts/invasions.  That or add some green gear that you can buy with motes.  Or lower the cost of the blue gear, up the chance for the blue tokens to drop, and allow players to gear up like that.

That's the one thing I don't like.  You either need access to crafting OR run quests for gear.  Dungeons never drop enough to keep you fully equipped.

[Lantyssa]

Incidentally, I was (again) pleasantly surprised by something, in this case crafted gear. Crafted gear in WoW is invariably way underpowered by the time you're able to craft it, at least at lower levels. The stuff in Rift may be nothing special and without a ton of variety but it's actually well itemized and the rate at which you're able to use it is very good.

I find metal armor very difficult to keep up with.  Cloth and leather, both of which drop aplenty, are used to level one profession.  Tin needs specific nodes, however, and is used for both chain and plate, so there is only one way to level it.  By the time my metal armor skill is sufficiently high, I'm wearing better quest gear.

[Threash]

Tin needs specific nodes, however, and is used for both chain and plate, so there is only one way to level it. 

And weapons.

[Ghambit]

Page one on the "things wow taught us five years ago" handbook: 8 second cast times for pets in pvp unfairly punish pet classes, stop making pets unsummon when dying in pvp.  Or at all really.

Necros, at least, have an ability for instant cast pet on something like a 30s cooldown.

On invasions/rfits and elites.  I agree they are overtuned right now.  Sometimes I just like plowing through 10 mobs solo.  It might have something to do with their dynamic system.  If they have X amount of people in the zone then you get more elites.  I think they'll have to tune that a bit.

I guess that's exactly what beta is for.

Well, you're essentially saying they should take their Dynamic AI and throw it out the window yes?  If "x" people are in the zone and you've wandered into an area all by your lonesome to get curbstomped by a patrol or foothold, why would they want to "detune" the rift/patrols?  If they did so, they'd be ignoring the amount of players in said zone and focusing more on the lone wolf who happened to be in a well populated area.   

It works fine the way it is as long as you organize folks in your zone (hey lookie, zone chat) or try to stick to areas where there's players.  If you find yourself alone under a rift in a zone containing a well-populated quest hub/town (which would then spawn a large rift/invasion), hell... you're fucked.  Run.   But they should in no way, shape, or form detune their zone-based content for the sake of the lone quester.

Hell, the worst that could happen is you fallback to another quest area and wait for the enemy line to reach the population centers.  Friendlies then pwn the enemy and you can get back to your grind.
Above all this, where in there is the "game" lost?  It's not... you've only lost your cozy theme park for a few minutes.  Take a bio-break, read quest lore, enter a warfront, talk to guildies, craft some shit or something.    yada yada

[kildorn]

The tuning of it basically means there are multiple points where your options are "go grind mobs for xp" and "log off"

I had the pleasure of watching a level 10 quest hub get chain rolled by level 18 assault forces. There's no number of level 10 characters who could have stopped that. The other issue with the code is the multi-assaults. It's usually not "your quest hub got hit by 8 elites", it's "your quest hub got hit by 8 elites, 8 elites, and 8 elites who all arrived at the same second in a clump because for whatever reason the system decided that's what needed to spawn and hit this location right now"

Realistic for an assault force? Yes! Terrible gameplay? Also yes. If we wanted to go the full realism route, the planet would be destroyed on release day by a line of level 50 dragons roaming around preventing anyone from leveling.

[Ghambit]

We'd have to know the underlying algorithm they're using to really have a beef, and moreso know how many people there are in the zone when these hubs get rolled.  If you've got 100 lvl 10's in an area and the game is balanced for 10 of em to be able to defeat 6 lvl 18s, well... then it'll spawn 6 lvl 18's (under the assumption they'd at least be able to mobiliize 1/10th of the zone population).  It doesnt care much where those 100 lvl 10's are located, just that they're in the area.  Whether 10 of those 100 players choose to fight or not isnt something Trion can ever hope to balance and not something they should try to, unless they've got a human at the controls or their AI is just that uber on a micro level.

[Threash]

They have the invasions turned to 11 for the betas though, it is starting to backfire.  I fucking love the saboteur, fucking love.  I'm just going around talking like this and bombing the fuck out of everything.

[Lantyssa]

We'd have to know the underlying algorithm they're using to really have a beef, and moreso know how many people there are in the zone when these hubs get rolled.  If you've got 100 lvl 10's in an area and the game is balanced for 10 of em to be able to defeat 6 lvl 18s, well... then it'll spawn 6 lvl 18's (under the assumption they'd at least be able to mobiliize 1/10th of the zone population).  It doesnt care much where those 100 lvl 10's are located, just that they're in the area.  Whether 10 of those 100 players choose to fight or not isnt something Trion can ever hope to balance and not something they should try to, unless they've got a human at the controls or their AI is just that uber on a micro level.

100 level 10's cannot beat a level 18 force.  There is too much of a level difference to hit the mobs, much less do enough damage.  See my earlier story about being level 10 following a few level 20s about.  I was hitting about 1 in 6 times, and I only had the illusion of doing something because I had three ranged despite being a warrior.  Were I a strict melee build they would have eaten me more than the few times they did.

Presenting a challenge is one thing.  At level 10 there is no alternative to sitting on your ass waiting for a bunch of higher levels to come save you.  These players need to be able to contribute in some meaningful way.

The Rifts are interesting, but being a level-based system causes a major flaw, especially in the early game where every level matters.

[Modern Angel]

Ghambit you have zero idea what you're talking about when it comes to how this actually works in practice.

[Ghambit]

It was a hypothetical scenario to examine how they might balance the game (a thought experiment of sorts); twas not based on actual ingame facts.
But yah, regardless you're probably right.   

[kildorn]

Really, in a slightly pvp oriented game, I'm shocked at how heavily level influences things. A mere four level gap or so is pretty much "you won't deal any damage and I'll kill you in seconds" range.

It's further compounded by the sheer size of the zones [the one we're playing around in covers levels ~5 through 18ish], where rifts spawning in one area will happily throw assaults at the other side of the zone.. which is a 10 level difference away when they finally show up and setup camp.

I'm also a little surprised how easy it is to range farm Idols. It has to be due to the spell range changes in the patch notes, but you can happily sit at max range nuking an idol and the guards won't blink most of the time. And even if they do, it doesn't regen health out of combat, so DoT and run. The guards will then resummon it immediately, repeat and farm motes as you care to.

[Threash]

I don't think i've seen more than one or two dwarves the entire time i've played.  I don't know why devs continue to push such an unpopular race.

[Modern Angel]

I always play dwarves. :(