Rift: Planes of Telara

[EWSpider]

What's the skinny on the interface?  What level of customization?

[Modern Angel]

Everything is scalable and movable. They're saying no mods, though

[Nebu]

They're saying no mods, though

That alone may garner my support.  I like the idea of everyone having to play with an identical interface, particularly if PvP is worthwhile.   

[Tarami]

I'm not seeing why they have to be, PQs are one of the few good points anyone ever brings up about WAR. 

PQ's were awesome for a week.  After that, it was clearly just a veiled xp grind.  Neat idea for initial impression, but I'm not sold that it has enough to aid in retention.  Games need a hook if they're going to charge a sub fee.  Unless the Rifts are determining world outcomes and events, they're just glorified mob spawn points.  We saw that (to a lesser degree) in SWG.

I have this concern myself. I've experienced two zone-wide events. Cool? Yeah, sure. Never the less I was getting rather sick of rifts at the end, without even really going for them. Which brings me to a related possible issue, which has two basic scenarios:

1) If the rifts of higher levels will require organization, how annoying will it be to form ad hoc groups over and over in order to beat them? People cry foul if as much as a single group quest stands in their way and here we have an entire game system that possibly requires you to group with random people.

2) If those rifts will not require organization, how will they be made more interesting than smaller rifts? From what we've gotten to see in the betas, the larger rifts aren't more interesting, just... larger. Fundamentally they're still just zergs, only with more and tougher mobs.

3) ?

I'm probably going to hold off on this until I know whether the rifts will stand the test of time (i.e. a few weeks) or not. The rest of it is just... too bland to bother.

[Draegan]

What's the skinny on the interface?  What level of customization?

I have a video, but it's boring.  Essentially think Warhammer's in game editor but bit more stable and better.  You can move and scale every UI frame and mess with the opacity.  You can easily root any UI element to any other including the side of the screen.

You can't remove artwork or anything else.

There has been mention of allowing full UI skinning eventually, I'm assuming similar to EQ2.  They have said nothing like WOW's addons.

[sam, an eggplant]

Cool.  Sooner than I expected, but cool.  They should be ready.

Has anyone not under NDA played through the >lvl 20 content?

Tortage-- nevar forget!

[Hawkbit]

Thanks for the webite links, Draegan.  Those are pretty much the ones I know of, so I'll just have to delve deeper into them.  Much appreciated.

[Threash]

Cool.  Sooner than I expected, but cool.  They should be ready.

Has anyone not under NDA played through the >lvl 20 content?

Tortage-- nevar forget!

The under 20 content is in no way shape or form Tortage quality, i don't fear a drop off because frankly that is the weakest part of the game.

[UnSub]

There are a lot of games I can play these days which don't require a $15 sub.

... and here's the winning answer. Sub games - particularly sub games who price themselves at the same level as WoW - are under a lot of pressure from the F2P market. I'd give Rift a better chance if they'd set the sub fee at $10 a month (or even $12) as another way to encourage players to pick and stick with this title over WoW.

[Ashamanchill]

What is their endgame looking like? I don't even  mean specifically, what have they mentioned? Rifts? Dungeons? Raids? PvP?

If they class customization is half as good as it's claimed to be it will be enough to keep me around for a month, but there has to be something other than that to get me to stay.

[Malakili]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/91000

[Draegan]

What is their endgame looking like? I don't even  mean specifically, what have they mentioned? Rifts? Dungeons? Raids? PvP?

If they class customization is half as good as it's claimed to be it will be enough to keep me around for a month, but there has to be something other than that to get me to stay.

Just PVE not counting PVP and Crafting.

Level 1-50
Normal Dungeons
Tier 1 Expert Dungeons x5
Expert Level Rifts
Tier 2 Expert Dungeons x5
Raid Level Rifts
Raids

That's the progression.  It was explained that you can't go from Tier 2 Experts without doing Tier 1s.  I'm not sure where the rifts fall into place.

I made a chart too, I love charts, and explained it.


It's all speculation though based on a podcast some of the developers did.

[sam, an eggplant]

The under 20 content is in no way shape or form Tortage quality, i don't fear a drop off because frankly that is the weakest part of the game.

But... tortage was pretty sweet.  We're coming at this from opposite directions.

[Arrrgh]

Are any of the upcoming beta phases endgame content?

If not they're pulling an AoC only showing the newbie isle.

[Arrrgh]

Cool.  Sooner than I expected, but cool.  They should be ready.

Has anyone not under NDA played through the >lvl 20 content?

Tortage-- nevar forget!

Sorry, you had already pointed out the Tortageness of it all.

[Kageru]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/91000

An error was encountered while processing your request:
This item is currently unavailable in your region

They don't even have the trailer on Australian steam.

[Kitsune]

Everything I've seen of Rift so far shows five people running down an unbranching path evenly spaced with monsters, making the people briefly stop and throw glowy balls at the monsters until they fall down, whereupon they run to the next group of monsters and repeat.  This begs the not-facetious question about how this isn't an inferior WoW.  Warcraft at least has some awesome sprawling instances with beautiful design, even of most of the more recent stuff has all been 'straight path with evenly spaced monsters'.  The class design at least seems interesting, but do any of these things have unique mechanics that give them an interesting playstyle?

[trias_e]

+1 to the post above me.  Haven't played the game, but damn do the videos of it look....uninteresting.

The soul trees have interested me much more than the gameplay.

[Zetor]

It's been said a few times, but "nothing special" is about the most positive thing I can say about Rift questing. It's on the level of BC WOW (2006) with a few very minor improvements; it's just kill-x, collect-y, interact-with-z, move-to-next-hub all the time. YMMV though -- some people prefer BC WOW to wotlk/cata WOW, and that's fine.

I'm on the fence, myself. The soul design looks kinda interesting (now that they give you enough points to actually branch out), and the instances I tried were fun -- it's just the questing that I'm not looking forward to, especially since I'm playing WOW Cataclysm right now. Who knows, maybe in a few months Cata burnout will set in and I'll give this game a try. :p

(personal pet peeve: no spell queuing / latency compensation of any sort, unlike WOW. Playing with 400-700 ping, I have to spam my instant casts so they actually get through... that got old 6 years ago!)

[Modern Angel]

They added a queue. It's even an adjustable queue with three settings: no queue, .5 second and full gcd (1.5 seconds).

The world design is a bit problematic. It's well sized but there aren't any nooks or crannies to explore. Nothing to get lost in. It's too... open. I don't know precisely how to describe it, because it's not a matter of size or color or visuals. To compare to WoW, even with everything on rails to the Nth degree now the zones have little dips and valleys which at least LOOK out of the way even if they aren't really. Rift lacks that.

[Lucas]

I also think different starting zone for the races would help (yes, of course, it's too late for that now), and I mean *after* the prologue, of course.

For example, I really like Kelari Refuge,  nice layout and atmosphere. It would be a very nice starting zone for the Kelari themselves, instead of a generic quest hub (albeit quite interesting with the invasions going on the beach) like it is now.

[Draegan]

Warcraft at least has some awesome sprawling instances with beautiful design,

They do?  I'm assuming you're talking about non-raids.  Every instance I've ever been in has been a straight narrow hallway.  Did this change in Cata much?

The world design is a bit problematic. It's well sized but there aren't any nooks or crannies to explore. Nothing to get lost in. It's too... open. I don't know precisely how to describe it, because it's not a matter of size or color or visuals. To compare to WoW, even with everything on rails to the Nth degree now the zones have little dips and valleys which at least LOOK out of the way even if they aren't really. Rift lacks that.

I'm not sure how you can say that having access to only two zones on the map, but even in Silverwood/Freemarch I disagree.

I also think different starting zone for the races would help (yes, of course, it's too late for that now), and I mean *after* the prologue, of course.

Unfortunately they penned themselves into the corner since the lore doesn't support that.  For example the Bahmi's world/plane/home or whatever was destroyed so they are taking refuge with the Eth.  The Dwarves and the Mathosians's homes were taken over by bad guys when the world blew up and took refuge with the Evles.

What they should of done since everyone is time traveling in the newbie tutorial zone was make 6 different ones.  That would be the perfect way to do it.

[Lantyssa]

Well, the problem with starting with racial areas is your character was dead.  You don't have any ties to the current areas other than maybe more of your race are present there.  Guardians have been dead for a few decades when they join the real game.  Defiants were resurrected at some nebulous point in the future from an alternate timeline, and due to how they were brought back could have been dead for a very long time.

Maybe they don't smack players upside the head with it enough in quest text, but I'd wager anyone not knowing that isn't going to read revised quest text or the little info blurbs a lot of NPCs have anyways.

What would be nice is if there were more race-specific quests like the one (three?) in the Defiant starter zone, something which does tie your character to them.  Obviously they won't want to do too many because it limits content exposure, but a few which really makes you want to feel a part of them would be nice.  The Kelari could have some real heart tuggers given their current plight.

[Modern Angel]

WoW from BC on does dungeons that are straight loot tubes with the illusion of there being more off the beaten path. You'll be happy to know that the two instances I've done in Rift are very much old school WoW style. They actually are windy and big instead of just seeming to be. Not BRD big. But big.

[Draegan]

We'll get to see two more this weekend too.  I love Iron Tombs as a whole.  Good atmosphere, cool mobs.  Fae is annoying just because it's all faerie stuff, but the seasonal changes are awesome.  I love the blizzard effect at the end, it's my favorite part.

[Mrbloodworth]

I see lots of sites calming it as a "WAR clone", with out the cool PvP.  Makes some sense, as some key staff is off that title. But I think they are way off :)


Also: Massively take

I am less-than-thrilled with the quest system, which is mindless chore-completion repeated endlessly, and I soon lost interest in reading the quest text or figuring out the story of the world. That's a shame, because it looks like a great world in truth, and the dynamic rift events show incredible promise to push public questing to a much more exciting level.

I rolled a Pyromancer in the Defiant beta and spent about an hour running around the initial zone (and fiddling with the UI). That probably doesn't seem like a lot of time to form an accurate impression, but it was more than enough for me to realize I've played this game about a hundred times over the last few years.

I played in the first and third betas, getting to level 15 on my Defiant Kelari Rogue. When I first played the game I was happy to make jokes about it, my favorite being: "It was nice of Trion to transfer my hunter from WoW, for free!" I've seen too many linear, multi-class click-fests to stomach another. In fact, finishing the tutorial zone was an exercise in patience. I literally wished I could skip the process because it felt so boxed-in and devoid of heart. According to the RIFT trailer, this was a "next-gen" experience that would "drive the genre forward." If you believe this, I have a titanium rocking chair to sell you.

[Nebu]

I don't see being a WAR-clone as a bad thing.  I enjoyed WAR a lot.  With some significant fixes it could have been a very good game. 

[Modern Angel]

All of which confirms my fear that the cool stuff isn't up front and obvious enough for people to get it in the first little bit. The tutorial zones suck. I don't think anything in those quotes is unfair for a casual playthrough.

[Mrbloodworth]

RIFT TV spot.

lolz. Going for the full on assault a?

All of which confirms my fear that the cool stuff isn't up front and obvious enough for people to get it in the first little bit. The tutorial zones suck. I don't think anything in those quotes is unfair for a casual playthrough.

I can't speak, but I think you will see more of the same line of comments as time goes on.

Its a good game, a solid game, a polished game, competing for people already saturated with its style of game play.

[Modern Angel]

Goddammit, don't do that. Don't. I don't know how much eyerolling you have to witness the past five odd years whenever anyone does a direct "we are steak, WoW is burgers" comparison to understand that shit turns people off. You should punch the guy who made that directly in the fucking throat for that last two seconds. Then kick him while he's down because there are things that are direct and OBVIOUS lifts from WoW.

Christ, that almost makes me irate enough to cancel my preorder.

Blood, I think it's only fair to not trim the quotes now that I'm reading them fully on the site. That first one is from a dude who really enjoys the game and has almost the exact same outlook as I do.

The polished UI, the fun character-building system, the familiar feel and the terrific animations are little things that add up to a worthwhile package, so I'm certainly inclined to keep on playing at this point. I just want to see more massive rift invasions and tackle a few dungeons before I come to any long-lasting opinion on the game.

It's also strange that the more beta events I've experienced, the more RIFT is growing on me -- a phenomenon I've heard echoed by some of my fellow bloggers. It's absolutely essential to get involved in the mass invasions and dynamic content before levying a judgment against this game, because it's started to open my eyes to how enjoyable it is when you're trotting off to a quest giver for a turn-in and you see a giant 500,000-health boss stomping all over the town as dozens of players band together to take him down. I'm also entranced with some of the smallest details, like the sound and art direction, which is absolutely terrific (check out how the game sounds when you're underwater!).

[Mrbloodworth]

I did trim, but to bring up the things some of us have been saying are being echoed, including the praise.  Its not the praise people will focus on though.  If the first things people are saying is "I have played this before", "Quests are boring", "Exercise in patience" the "Rifts are kinda neat" won't float it.

I too loved the rifts, loved the invasions....... Its everything else not superficial thats the problem.

[Modern Angel]

I'd be really curious to see what they need to swing for a profit. It's obviously pretty big budget if they're buying television spots but there's something about the entire endeavor which makes me think they kept costs down. I have absolutely no concrete information to sway me on that. Just a weird hunch.

[Lantyssa]

Goddammit, don't do that. Don't. I don't know how much eyerolling you have to witness the past five odd years whenever anyone does a direct "we are steak, WoW is burgers" comparison to understand that shit turns people off. You should punch the guy who made that directly in the fucking throat for that last two seconds. Then kick him while he's down because there are things that are direct and OBVIOUS lifts from WoW.

The marketing tag was silly given all the effort to clone parts of WoW.  Also if the reason given to play your game is it isn't WoW, you've already lost.

[Falconeer]

I preordered. Who's making a guild?

[Threash]

RIFT TV spot.

Ah geez, that is such a bad idea.