f13.net

...and we've got fishing  :awesome_for_real:

http://forums.riftgame.com/public-test-shard/305844-1-8-progress-set-1-3-16-12-a.html

Glad to see they're finally adding a looking-for-guild tool. I'll probably resub once 1.8 hits. New raid also looks pretty cool.

The new raid probably depends on how they tune it. If it starts out like HK was when it showed up, I'm not so sure.

At the moment, things are relatively fun if you are on a populated server. The daily dungeon quest has raiders in the que which makes things go a bit more smoothly. Most runs generally have one or two wildly overgeared people in them. Beyond that, the various options for exchanging tokens for PA experience gives a fair number of other options. Instant Adventures seem to be taking hold. Ususally there are a group or two out doing them and the PA xp is not bad. Its not EI onslaught good, but its less mind numbing.

The new weekly raid quests +nerf batting means that GSB and DH pugs are common. GP is slightly less common. RoS has a dumb weekly quest so I rarely see that one and when they go off they ususally collapse after the weekly quest is done.

HK pugs seem to be happening as well, but that may be just my server as we have half a dozen of the top guilds and 11 guilds who have completed HK. So there's a fairly geared base out there.

Having six available specs is nice as well, though as always I want more. I can keep a bard, a pvp, a tank, 2 DPS options and a solo spec.

I do really, really miss that aspect of Rift.

If only they had someone other than a monkey designing the Bard soul.

Yeah, bards really are boring and of debatable importance. Fervor is really only useful for rogues and Living Energy is an acceptable substitute and runspeed is a unique buff that only doesn't get used on Estrode and possibly Matron. The other two unique action abilities are Verse of Joy which is again of limited use outside of rogues and the AoE physical dps debuff. The think that sucks about bard is that there is nothing to really differentiate a good from a bad bard other than a question, can you keep your motifs up? There's no way to really bard harder. I barely out DPS the tank and my heals only do something if one of the real healers drops the ball. Stupid motif of regeneration isn't even a smart heal.

I get three actual jobs in HK. I hit crystals on Zilas and interrupt Prince and apostles on Akylios.

Best thing about the bard is Autohotkey.  1 Keypress motifs.

It's not like you're stuck using that soul. That's the great thing about the system. It changes "I'm totally worthless, buff/nerf/blah" into "Wouldn't it be nice if bards were more useful, they're an interesting soul mechanic". Because you can just pick from the other souls rather than be shafted until someone fixes the class.

Oh heck no, I only bard in 20 person raids. Its a rather minor nit to pick after all. I do have my five different specs for different things. I have a ranged DPS spec, a melee DPS spec, a pvp spec, a tank spec and a completely self sufficient solo spec that can double as a ghetto pvp spec.

The problem with bards is that they bring a couple of completely unique buffs to the raid group, but that's all they do and providing them is mostly automated. Things wouldn't be so bad if you could mix in other souls for utility. However, to get all of the unique buffs you need to go 51 deep in the bard tree leaving you 15 points to shop elsewhere and the bard soul synergizes with nothing.

I bard because no one else wants to and I made the mistake my first raid saying "Sure, I'll do that my first raid. It will give me the opportunity to see how things work in a low stress position." I heard "my first raid" and everyone else heard "Sure, I'll do that". Yes, the raid group would let me switch, but someones' got to do it.

You don't raid, so you're right.  But if you raid you have to have a Bard and every Rogue does not want to be that person.  It's a really shitty soul.  Terrible design and mechanics.  There are a ton of things you can do, that I've written extensively about as well as others, that you can do to make it even just a tad bit more interesting.

Instead it's shoot off motifs, pause 20 seconds, shoot them off again.

See why I don't raid? :)

Actually, EQ1 cured me of that when my master of the undead suddenly became a mana battery for people actually playing the game. Fuck right off with that nonsense.

Wasn't there a tale of yore, about the two EQ necros that participated in some kind of semi-official pvp dueling tournament?

And when the time came for them to face off, the tournament officials were verily vexed. For yea, did the two necromancers mightily spam their mana battery power upon one another.

Or was that all an internet legend?

I can't have made this up myself, since I never played EQ.

No, that totally happened. 

Sounds a lot like RDM and being a refresh rotation bitch. Only real reason you got invites to groups (and you got them whether you wanted them or not) was to cast refresh and help emergency heal. Loved the attention and auto-invites...but like sky said, you became a mana fount for the people actually playing the game.

Dia Refresh Refresh Refresh Haste Haste Dia Refresh Refresh Refresh Haste Haste Dia Refresh Refresh Refresh Haste Haste Dia Refresh Refresh Refresh Haste Haste CONVERT CURE Dia Refresh Refresh Refresh Haste Haste  Dia Refresh Refresh Refresh Haste Haste.

This is a huge problem in a lot of games, where you have a role that changes significantly on your journey from level 1 to max, and can morph into something you did not expect or enjoy. I mained RDM and playing as a debuffer was super fun. (I loved how at low levels you could take aggro by blinding a dude lol - they don't like that blind!) But at a certain point party play had basically zero debuffing or magic bursting. Soloing and BCNMs and such were still fun but playing in an EXP party became just awful.

The RDM problem also illustrates how some minor changes to formulas and such can change the game in major ways. If you are fighting an IT++ enemy you NEED debuffs to live, if you are stringing together VTs any debuff is a waste of time. Change the XP formula to favor the latter and you completely change a job's role.

This is why I believe that every MMO should offer respecs and job changes and such.

The thing is even bards in EQ were dull as hell to play in raids until they got Fading Memories and could resume pulling duties in Planes of Power. For a class that got more abilities than every other class combined, and could hilarious and amazing things in groups, once you were in a raid you were singing mana regen / haste / spell haste for the entire night. I don't really know any game that has managed to take the 'jack of all trades, hundreds of abilities' roles that bards have and successfully made them interesting in a raiding environment.

Saying that, Rift bards are particulary badly done and absolutely do need revisiting. Replaying Motifs has got to be one of the stupidest design decisions of a modern MMO, and I cannot imagine anyone actually enjoys playing the bard role in a raid.

I cant believe they still havent fixed that shit over a year after launch especialyl from a development team that "seemed" to have a clue. Bard class guy needs a punch to the face. 

Yeah, the whole bard soul is the only black mark against Trion so far.

I sort of like being the bard in large groups.  :oops:

Looks like they have decided to hold back the next tier of PA. (http://www.riftjunkies.com/2012/03/26/the-planar-attunement-grind/#more-12979) Probably a good choice. Other than the multiple planar charges per charge gained, there wasn't much interesting.

I've been generally pleased with the PA system so far. The "good" T2 weapon buffs are nice for general screwing around. The lures and additional charges have been really handy. The levels also come fast enough that you get the pleasant pavlovian dinggrats feel.

Yes. Reminds me of the days of playing a Chosen in WAR and using AutoHotKey to run the aura rotations. Makes it so much easier to focus on healing and damage when the motifs just run themselves. ;)

That said, I enjoy playing the bard soul in PvP, even if it isn't the best soul in the game, I enjoy the fact that I can out-heal most other healers and still be in the top 5 damage dealers in a battle.

As for raiding, EQ1 cured me of ever doing it in a game ever again. I try to avoid it at all costs. Player opponents are so much more interesting anyhow.

When I signed into my Trion account they made me update my password but gave me 3 days of free gametime for the inconvenience. Pretty nice. I got to check out the tail-end of the Anniversary event which seemed fun for the most part. Nice that they let you earn tokens from previous world events to get items you may have missed. The dragon pinatas are awesome too.

I'd forgotten just how *good* Rift's UI really was. Just simple things like being able to place markers on the map quickly that everyone in your group can see, or how zone events and objectives are displayed. Or how the casting bar displays and how streamlines the quest log is. Comparing Rift's UI to SWTOR's feels like comparing games from different generations.

The pre-made Soul Tree templates really seemed like a bad concession when I heard about them: the soul tree system is one of the best parts of the game, why encourage people to ignore it? In practice it's actually pretty cool to have a template ready to go with some information about what it does and how it plays. Once you see it in action and you understand the abilities being referenced in the trees, you can tackle the soul tree and make your own spec changes. I never bothered trying tanking or melee dps on my cleric, but now the prospect of doing so doesn't seem as daunting.

I had a lot of fun playing last night and felt like I had a ton of goals left to accomplish on my 50 cleric. Actually considering doing the $99/year sub while the special is active. I think I'd get a lot more mileage out of Rift now that I'm not super absorbed in other MMOs.

I think melee dps cleric was probably my favorite in alpha. Later nerfed to hell, but it was a really fun combo at the time.

I have no evidence to back this up, but I assume that Trion got a lot of exit feedback about the soul system, and they probably found that it was either confusing or overwhelming to some of their players.

I read on some dev blog once, that the general population prefers class-based games to skill-based games, in no small part because a class-based game provides you with a roadmap from one ability to the next. I scoffed in derision at the time, since I was a scarred, spreadsheet-toting veteran of many Asheron's Call and City of Heroes character-planning campaigns. But in the meantime, I have come to recognize what that guy was talking about.

What Trion did with the templates seems to me like a good starting point for a new player.

I haven't seen them, but I agree with the premise. Hand people the ease of a class-type system and then let them explore things further or not as they see fit. Let the player dumb themselves down rather than force folks who like the added control and flexibility to compromise.

Class based systems make it a lot easier to recognize and classify archetypes. If you have a game where paladin is a tanky class then when you see a paladin you know that guy is tanky. As opposed to you see some guy and have to ask him "so what skills do you have leveled?" And in the end a skill-based system will probably clump into different archetypes anyway.

In multiplayer games that kind of stuff matters a lot.

Tried this again after playing on release.  The combat is strikingly bad after coming from SWTOR.  SWTOR's fluidity and movement is really nice.  It just feels so much better. Too bad I hate everything else about SWTOR, and I like mostly everything else about RIFT.  If RIFT played like SWTOR I would've probably never quit in the first place.

I do remember disliking how my rogue played in Rift. Melee lacked any feeling of impact. Playing a ranged cleric, I don't have the same issue. Spell effects/sounds are nice, and the various casting animations that use your totems/weapons during the animation are really welcome for the genre. In short: try playing a ranged soul if you haven't already.

Funny that. I didn't feel that SWTOR's movement and fluidity was all that good, especially in PvP. The lightsaber animations were well done, yes, so the melee combat with those felt good, but otherwise things felt about the same to me. If anything, I felt PvP could be worse at times in SWTOR because the constant punting and pulling made for a jerky experience. You do get that with certain opponents in Rift, too.

The 'pulling someone to you' mechanism needs to die in a fire.  It's the primary reason I quit playing WoW.  All the freaking death knights when wotlk released ruined pvp for me.

How else should a melee be able to compete in pvp?

Also, lolpvpmmo.  :grin:

So difficult to resist mocking this post. You're welcome, rest of f13.

It's what the market wants for group-based mechanics, whether co-op NPC or PvP. This is true across most genres. And even for early MMOs, it's what all skills systems generally evolve (or devolve) into anyway. We were all there for the 7xGM [templates].

I agree people should be given the choice. But I don't agree that level of choice should be so open ended as to cause the confusion Margalis talks about. The vast majority of gamers don't seem to worry that much about what their partners/opponents can do.

But at the same time as I had a tank mage (Sky!), I had a bunch of other interesting characters that were a total blast to play. My seige perilous character didn't have a single combat skill but was awesome in pvp. But that virtual world ship has sailed.

As I said, I like the idea of having 1st party templating for those who just want to play. And then the complexity of the skill system underneath it for those who like that kind of thing.

Last time a DK pulled me over to them, I destroyed them. Then again, I was playing my DK. :D

1.8 is live.

So far I've taken advantage of the 10pp price drop on the 90% mount, and started fishing.

Fishing is cool. You get to place your lure. And when a fish hits it, your cursor turns into a fish. You don't have to click right on the bobber to fish up your catch.

They put in a mechanic, the purpose of which I don't quite get: when you click, you don't always reel in your catch. When this happens, you have to wait for your cursor to turn into a fish again, and then repeat. According to the tutorial popup, this can happen more than once, but you should always pull something in eventually.

I got my toon to 50 skill. In doing so, I pulled in fish, grey junk, and artifacts. People around me were getting an achievement for catching "sunken treasure".

Fish can be used in crafting. The Fishing skill lets you create lures. The Survival skill lets you turn fish into edible food.

You can catch "rare" fish. You turn in these fish for prizes. One of the prizes is zone rep. I put quotes around "rare" because I caught enough of them on the way to 50 skill, to make two turn-ins.

I never thought I'd say these words, but the fishing is actually pretty fun. I've hated it in every other MMO, but the Rift implementation is pretty good.

They did a small patch yesterday that added nameplates to the game. Nice addition I wasn't expecting and as usual their UI team nailed it.

The name plates really are very nice.

I don't see name-plates being able to save this game, but it's the thought that counts, I guess  :oh_i_see: :why_so_serious:

Re-subbed and tried out their soul templates.  Pretty cool.  Dipped my toes in Ember Isle and got punked, no fun.  Lots of changes (what happened to all the artifacts?) but the blandness is intact.  Really like the relaxed players and the easy grouping.  Dislike all the weird loot that I'm not sure what to do with. "Someone in town might like this."  Uh ok, helpful.

I'd like to see a companion like in SWTOR that at least goes out and gathers mats from lower tier areas.  The LFD system is great.  So's the guild finder, some really nice additions there.

The game is pretty boring solo, but actually fun in a group or even with a partner.  That's the strength of MMO's to me. 

Ember Island seems balanced for people in full dungeon gear realistically, but the soul you're using makes a big difference too. Artifacts are still in the game, so I'm not sure what you meant by that. Lots of quest/activities give what are essentially badges for dungeon/raid gear, so I'm guessing that's what you were seeing there.

The easiest way to gear up fast is to run a couple experts and fill out your remaining slots with gear you get from Plaques of Achievement. It seems like they collect really fast, so you should be able to buy a new piece of gear after every 2 dungeons or so.

Thanks for the info.  I guess I went to EI too soon.  Having fun with the soul templates, I think they did a great job there.  I healed a group in Darkening Deeps(?) and had no problems, a fun run.   Got three blue upgrades and no one bitched about my rolling Need there. 

Mages seem underpowered, my Dark Thane warrior soul seems to do more damage, kills stuff quicker.  Even the Priest dps spec knocked shit out fast. 

But it's still boring to solo, guess I'll need to find a guild and hit instances more.  That's pretty fun and fairly stress-free.

So I went to the Rift site on impulse after reading up on the expansion and got 3 free days just by resetting my password... figured this was a good time to check out where the game's at. I'm actually considering resubbing.  :ye_gods:

I cancelled a year ago, so my gear's all blues and an epic or two from the death invasion event + some t2 expert dungeons (there don't seem to be tiers anymore?). The forums are surprisingly unhelpful when it comes to healer builds *not* for pvp or for high-end raiding (or dungeons when the cleric outgears them by 3-4 tiers), so I went with my old 34/32 puri/sent build and it seemed to work ok in that new dungeon they added in normal mode... man, healing in RIFT is a whole lot more complex than I remember. I think I like it! Time to dash my confidence in expert dungeons. I wonder if a wow-style LFR is in the works, or are you just supposed to do the 1-2man 'chronicle' raids if you're not in a raid guild?

I tried out instant adventures in Stillmoor, and it was pretty cool. It really reminds me of GW2, only a bit more directed (and only for 2-3 zones currently). It looks like they're extending it for more levels (and adding mentoring!) which is all kinds of awesome.

Is crafting gear (and not just consumables) worthwhile if you run rifts/IAs/dungeons, but don't raid? My main has maxed artifice, my alt has maxed runecrafting/outfitter fwiw.

(didn't bother with pvp... I'm figuring it's clownshoes with the huge gear disparity, which is getting levelled a bit with 1.9)

Puri sent is the way to go for entry expert healing. You have good through put, decent aoe with surging flames and direct AoE heals and good CDs when necessary. There are some interesting -icar healing builds, but I have never tried them for instance healing. You still need to macro for mouseover healing though.

The crafted stuff that came out with HK late last summer is good stuff, equivalent to GSB/RoS stuff, particularly the weapons and rings. Mat costs are still kind of heavy due to the CDs and the vendor materials. The new upgradeable planar conqueor gear is also really good. It can use the GSB/RoS synergy crystals. But it takes a crap ton of inscribed crystals.

On the progression scheme, I believe the chronicles are slightly below experts. There are the new raid weeklies for the T1 raids, 1 10 man and 1 20 man. They are both easily pugable, though it's a good idea to read up on the fights. The GP and RoS weekly groups ususally end once the quests are done. The DH and GSB generally clear because you are almost done by that point.

PvP is hit or miss. There is a tiering system to hopefully match gear levels, but the population seems to be a tad low other than the weekend to really support it. With the new mercenary system, they seem to err on the side of getting any games going. They did remove the level requirements on armor and jewelry, so you can grind out the top level stuff from the beginning, but with the way things go, you hit each tier about when you used to naturally.

On another front, I want to complain about the new raid. Mechanic wise, it's interesting and fun for the first four bosses I have seen, but good lord is it tightly tuned. You can't really carry anyone past the first boss and damn if Ituziel and his over developed ass isn't annoying. Hitting the enrage timer means you need all of your DPS comfortably over 3k and several pushing 4k. Ranged rogues are the only ones that seem to do this easily. The top mage spec is some cracked out monkey dot mess and we only have two people that can get appropriate numbers out of it. There are disconnects every 20 seconds borking warriors. The good cleric spec is currently melee so suffers the same disconnect problem.

Good info, thanks! Yeah, looks like that ol' 34/32 still has some life left in it. I kinda miss my old dungeon healing spec [something like 51 sentinel with 11 inquisitor for purge + aggressive renewal and the rest in purifier], but that one's missing a lot of oh-crap buttons. Speaking of purge, have people gotten better about dispelling shit and/or have boss self-buffs been toned down?

Also tested my old 38/20/10-ish inq/cabalist build, it didn't age too well. Still effs zergs up in rifts and stuff, but the damage isn't all there (compared to my champion/riftblade alt in greens/blues). Will probably just keep a fully ranged dps spec, numbers be damned... if I want to hit people with a 2-hander, I can play my champ. My server (Faeblight... my guild moved there when our old server got trialified) seems to have a good number of pugs going all the time, and the instant adventure thing's been a success as well. Only two problems I've encountered so far is 1] rezzing on way-the-fuck-other-side of the map of Ember Isle (I died in the NE section and rezzed in the SW... ended up saying 'fuck this' and took the spirit healer debuff) 2] some of the 'end events' in adventure event chains are really not doable without a healer (mr. spam-lightning-aoe-at-40-yards insect, I'm looking at YOU!). Of course these two things aren't an issue when I'm playing as a healer 'cos incoming damage isn't really too bad at all... as long as there's someone pushing the green bars up. I liked how I could stand by one of the healing wells in town on my warrior and get enough passive healing to hold my own against an invasion, though.

Re pvp, most of the reason I'm holding out is because there's going to be a big pvp gear price drop in 1.9... may as well keep my stockpiled 100k honor/valor/whatever points until then! Besides, that patch has 3-sided pvp, which as we all know, Solves All Problems With PVP Instantaneously.

The EI rez thing is all sorts of fucked up. The extra special annoying thing is that healers aren't conveniently near to heal up. Though I suppose that it's EI with planar thingees all around, so there's no reason not to bust out a medic. Note, that 9 planar charges is really nice and fairly cheap PA wise so there's no reason not to have them.

For the last stage in an Instant Adventure, most of them are planar monsters so you god mode that shit up with Holy Champion/Fury of the Ascended/Whatever it is that bad guys call it. That's also how you handle fully upgraded onslaught locations when the elite invasions show up. If things get too hectic, let the invasions take out a turret or healing well and the elites will stop spawning.

For the souls, they really did seem to go all in on 51 pts for DPS.  51 inquisitor for the bullshit in PvP Nasyr's Rebuke is nice and it leaves 10 points for Justicar and DoL +5 somewhere else useful.