Rift: Planes of Telara

[Mrbloodworth]

massively says the NDA is lifted.

Until Trion posts "NDA lifted" in big ass letters, you won't see me commenting on anything.

Same, but still.

[Threash]

Both of these issues were my two of my top three complaints so I am glad that they are being addressed.  The not having a 'preview' before making a permanent choice was just bang your head painful.

Yeah even the npcs who were supposed to tell you about your choices basically said variations of "whats a nightblade? a fucking bad ass, thats what".

[Murgos]

Hartsman says no more NDA:

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?14805-The-Rift-NDA-Free-Podcast-Scott-Hartsman-Alyvian-Abigale-amp-Beta-Gameplay

[Hawkbit]

Is that official enough for F13?  Not posting until I see otherwise. 

[Threash]

I don't see how that wouldn't be.  This game is fucking awesome.

[Blackluck]

I hardly post here but I've lurked for years.

I've been in both beta events, and while initially I was lukewarm, the game grew on me substantially this past event.
Enjoyed it a lot. Very polished for early beta, and the team is responsive to rational feedback.

I'm a Hartsman fanboi though, so YMMV.

[Shatter]

Is that official enough for F13?  Not posting until I see otherwise. 

http://forums.riftgame.com/showthread.php?14574-%E2%80%9CEnter-the-Rift%E2%80%9D-Beta-Event-Set-for-December-28

[Modern Angel]

They've got the NDA lift as a sticky in their forums and people are spilling on the official site. That's as legit as it gets. I'm just going to copy paste my thoughts from elsewhere:

So let's get this part out of the way. This game is shockingly open about its WoW clone status. I'm not talking about "Oh look another MMO with quest grinding!" That's baseline now. That's normal. I'm talking about little stuff you notice if you play WoW for an extended period of time. Rogue classes have the exact same mechanics; you even start with sinister strike and eviscerate analogues with the exact same mechanics. There are flasks under a different name. The achievements are organized almost exactly the same with the exact same interface. I'm sure there are others but that's what jumped out at me.

There are a LOT of quests. Too many, almost, and they're almost strictly vanilla WoW quality. Kill X these, come back. They're not especially well written. They're a bit tedious sometimes. It's quest GRINDING in the strictest sense of the word.

So if it's just like WoW, why play it? Because it's NOT just like WoW. There are going to be a lot of people who play the first five levels (the noob tutorials for both factions stink, frankly) and write it off as an exact replica of WoW with pretty lighting effects. They're doing both the game and themselves a great disservice.

Let's start with the outer layer of the onion. The lore's awesome. The factions are awesome. Things still break down on the micro level, where individual quest text comes into play because the quests (like most quests) just aren't super well written and who reads that shit anyway, right? But the MACRO, zoomed out level really works.

Aside from the stuff I wrote in the OP, the two factions are compelling. One faction is the basic "good guy" faction. Generic humans, dwarves and high elves. Except it turns things on its head by making them religious fanatics. They set up a shield to keep out the great evils from Beyond but it turned into a calcification of their thinking. The "bad guy" faction took the tack of using arcane technology to fight the evils and are mostly atheistic. You can see how a three way war breaks out between the two PC factions and the gribblies invading. Unlike WoW, which has a visually well realized world but a kitchen sink stupidity to its lore once you zoom out, I feel like Rift has lore which works for me on that zoomed out level. Oh, it's also visually well realized which makes it a rarity in the MMO world and something that cannot be dismissed when gauging the popularity of other games.

So that leads us to rifts themselves. These are FUN. They work exactly as advertised. They'll open the fuck up right on top of you or that quest hub you're heading to. They'll launch roving patrols to gank you if you're on the roads. People have to work together to close them if they want to solo quest. That's going to irritate the shit out of some people; MMO players are generally conservative weirdos who want no derivation from the expected. They thrive on it. And there's plenty of that in Rift, too, with all the quests but the real crux of things is the unpredictability of the rift mechanics. There's also a huge variance in difficulty with them, as well, from soloable to group to raid. All level appropriate so you can presumably get raid level rewards as you level.

The classes are awesome, too. I like that there are pure support classes or quirky mechanics that won't fly in a world increasingly given to class homogenization. My first character was a pet mage class that played pretty much exactly as you'd expect. I decided to have my second soul be the pure cc mage class and I switched over to see how it played when I specced solely cc mage. What? No real direct nuke, just a channeled mana drain/damage? Lots of cc? It's a group class for specific situations. The great thing is that you can do this in Rift due to the way it's laid out and not worry about the useless class syndrome since you can switch them around on the fly. It's having your old school MMO cake and eating it too.

Will the class mechanics be hard to balance? God yes; maybe impossible. But I appreciate the attempt to do *something* besides homogenize all the classes in a game for the sake of balance. Nobody wants gross imbalance but the opposite extreme is just as bad.

I got my invite out of the blue, like I said, and I didn't really think much of it. What I ended up with, though, is a game that I really, REALLY like. It's better than the superficial glance would reveal, much better. I'm buying it with bells on.

[Modern Angel]

Let me add as a further thought that I have never, ever been in a beta as feature complete and bug free as this game. They're not even in open beta and they could launch tomorrow. They could've launched two months ago. When they said that this game will be complete when it ships they weren't bullshitting. You may not like the content but nobody will be able to say it's not there.

[Mrbloodworth]

I agree with Modern Angel, however.

The rifts were my big disappointment.

They open in the same locations every time, they go through the same sequence every time, and its the same mobs every time. They are only dynamic in when they pop up. I also soloed every single one I encountered.

The quests..... I was highly disappointed. I was already burned out in LOTRO and WOW because of the quest system that hasn't evolved..... It weighted on me here too. That may just be me though.

My other gripe was the giving out of the souls, however it seems they will address that.

Art is amazing in all aspects, and I'm highly surprised it does not have the performance issues I thought it would have being fully normal mapped.

[Draegan]

Is that official enough for F13?  Not posting until I see otherwise. 

I got an official email from Trion's Media dept:

“ENTER THE RIFT” BETA EVENT SET FOR DECEMBER 28

 

“Enter the Rift,” the third closed beta event for Rift™, the upcoming MMO from Trion Words, is scheduled to start at 10am on December 28th, and run through 10am, December 31th. Choosing a character from either the Guardian or Defiant factions, players will fight through the first 20 levels of the game battling back planar rifts, running dungeons and exploring the vibrant world of Telara.

 

Editor’s Note: The NDA for Trion Worlds' Rift closed beta officially lifts today at 9 AM PST. Beta participants and press are now free to post information and assets from the first two events, along with all subsequent beta events through launch.

[Modern Angel]

The rifts were my big disappointment.

They open in the same locations every time, they go through the same sequence every time, and its the same mobs every time. They are only dynamic in when they pop up. I also soloed every single one I encountered.

Nope. They open in random locations. In the first event for the first two days they had them turned down in scope and difficulty. They're also not all soloable. There are full fledged raid rifts which scale to zone level, too.

[Chimpy]

I didn't play much. The total mob of people in the real zone was too much for me. Having no instant cast spells made it impossible to tag mobs for quests.

They really need to look into a way to segment the population out a bit better. I really thought Aion's Channel system worked great (but the design of Rift's world I think is such that it would not work as each zone outside of the newb area does not appear to be a separate instance as in Aion).

[Draegan]

I agree with Modern Angel, however.

The rifts were my big disappointment.

They open in the same locations every time, they go through the same sequence every time, and its the same mobs every time. They are only dynamic in when they pop up. I also soloed every single one I encountered.

The quests..... I was highly disappointed. I was already burned out in LOTRO and WOW because of the quest system that hasn't evolved..... It weighted on me here too. That may just be me though.

My other gripe was the giving out of the souls, however it seems they will address that.

Art is amazing in all aspects, and I'm highly surprised it does not have the performance issues I thought it would have being fully normal mapped.

A few things here I'd like to comment on.

The soul acquisition is going to change.  Scott said this in the open letter about Beta 2.

Rifts will vary.  There will be Expert Rifts (hardmode) and Raid Rifts all with different mechanics.  You just saw the low level Rifts which is essentially in the first zone of the game.  They've said in plenty of interviews that they can input different encounters on the server side without having to patch them in.  It's a big part of their technology.

Also, regarding Calling (class) mechanics, each calling has it's own gimmick.  All Rogues have a 5 combo point system like WOW, but each soul works with it differently.  While the assassin does have the cookie cutter Sinister strike like abilities, try playing a Bard or a Blade Dancer.  Mages use a "charge mechanic" and warriors use a 3 point-but-different-than rogues system.  Clerics are the only calling that uses "only mana".

If you get an invite into the next beta event and are playing the lowbie characters, as a Cleric I would suggest picking up the Shaman, Druid, Warden souls first.  As a Rogue make sure you pick up the Blade Dancer, Bard and Ranger souls.

If you want me to expound just ask.

[Ard]

The rifts are the real draw for me, despite the fact that they open in set locations more or less.  The did a very, very good job of evoking the same feeling I get from pvp with them and from the invasions, of the "oh shit, I need to get over there and help, RIGHT NOW".  It definitely breaks of the tedium of quest grinding really nicely, for me, especially since what comes out of the rifts is more or less random, and you don't really know what's coming.  I haven't been this excited about an MMO in a long, long time.

[Lantyssa]

Note the NDA drop is for Beta Weekend events.

[Draegan]

Technically, it's Beta Events now since next week's is from Tuesday through Friday. 

[Threash]

One thing i didn't like was that the races seemed very pigeon holed into their roles by their very powerful racials.

[Modern Angel]

Somewhat. Mostly I found the races a bit bland even as I found myself liking the faction split, including their racials.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'll just step out now, then.

[Lantyssa]

Technically, it's Beta Events now since next week's is from Tuesday through Friday. 

Events then.  I'm trying to be all wink-wink to warn the super-secret testers they shouldn't get too gung-ho.

[Threash]

Somewhat. Mostly I found the races a bit bland even as I found myself liking the faction split, including their racials.

I think they did a really good job with the humans, something rare on a game with multiple races.  I worry about the side with the dwarves, they have never been popular on any game ever and yet devs keep adding them, in a game with 3 races per side though having a very unpopular one could wreck hell with faction balance.  They do have the high elves though, which are way better looking than the avatar elves the other side gets.

[Raguel]

I think I killed my enjoyment early on when I made the mistake of making several characters to test out different combos (1 (human?) mage, 1 human warrior, 1 dwarf rogue, 1 elf cleric). There was only one starting area and doing the same thing 4x was incredibly annoying so at some point I abandoned that. I didn't get to play a lot after saturday but I did get the cleric (shaman/druid) to 10ish.

As MA stated, the quests are pretty bland. I'm going to have to agree with a poster on another forum and say I really wish games would delineate menial tasks from quests. Saving the princess, killing the dragon, instigating (or stopping) holy wars: these things are quests. Killing 10 rats are tasks.

I'm disappointed that the paladin class doesn't really fit the mold of what I'd consider a paladin to be (i.e. no any time heals and from what I saw no buffs, but I really didn't look hard after finding no heal spells  )

I can't stress enough how disappointed I am with how much this game reminds me of WoW (especially given that I've only played it for about 1 1/2 mos and I'm already getting tired of it). The class system appears awesome, I just wish the PvE matched it.

Having a rift open literally right on top of me was  . I like the fact that rifts are basically open quests (someone said it's like a WAR mechanic, but I didn't get out of WAR's tutorial, so I dunno). I basically solo'd one and helped close 2 others. It was pretty chaotic and a lot more fun than doing anything else.

[Sky]

Arg, another holiday beta event. I'll do what I can to coordinate, it'll be easier without the beta NDA in place. We had a couple folks on faeblight. Use teamspeak! I have a BC charter on the Guardian side there that needs two more sigs. I'd prefer to play Defiant, though, and we could run two guilds if we had enough people interested.

For the defiant beta, I rolled an Inquisitor/Sentinel with Warden for group healing. There was some nice synergy between Inq and Sent, but this changed between test events. So I rolled a Shaman/Sentinel (I like the free instant heal!) for the second event, but only hit level 12 because of the holiday weekend, so didn't get to test this build with groups or build another group build. To tack onto what Draegan was saying about mechanics (rogue combo points and warrior action points), some souls also have their own mechanics, the Justicar cleric soul has Convictions that can be built up and spent on special abilities in combat, kind of like combo and action points.

I'm glad they're opening up the soul system, it's easily the coolest thing about the game. When you get to twenty and have a couple roles and more points/souls to move around, you begin to see the power in the system. In one Iron Tomb run in the first event, I was the backup cleric. I was in my dps role (Inq primary with some Sentinel) with just a couple 0pt heals for backups. Then for bosses (or tougher trash fights), I could swap into my healer role with Warden primary and really push up the healing for the group. Being able to swtich roles on the fly like that is amazing.

Also, it's wicked pretty.

[Threash]

I loved the fact that i could pick rogue and could switch between melee dps, range dps, aoe dps, tank, buffer, or even healing if bards were up to the task just by switching between four roles.  I can level once and have access to a massive amount of different playstyles.

[Draegan]

Somewhat. Mostly I found the races a bit bland even as I found myself liking the faction split, including their racials.

I think they did a really good job with the humans, something rare on a game with multiple races.  I worry about the side with the dwarves, they have never been popular on any game ever and yet devs keep adding them, in a game with 3 races per side though having a very unpopular one could wreck hell with faction balance.  They do have the high elves though, which are way better looking than the avatar elves the other side gets.

In Beta 3 take a peak at the Kelari Racial.  Those who were in Beta 1 can attest to this.  It's the best one in the game.

[Threash]

Somewhat. Mostly I found the races a bit bland even as I found myself liking the faction split, including their racials.

I think they did a really good job with the humans, something rare on a game with multiple races.  I worry about the side with the dwarves, they have never been popular on any game ever and yet devs keep adding them, in a game with 3 races per side though having a very unpopular one could wreck hell with faction balance.  They do have the high elves though, which are way better looking than the avatar elves the other side gets.

In Beta 3 take a peak at the Kelari Racial.  Those who were in Beta 1 can attest to this.  It's the best one in the game.

I did get to play the kelari, i honestly do not expect that racial to make it in that form to live.  It is so far beyond overpowered it makes any other race superfluous.

[waylander]

Yeah the Kelari racial will get toned down, or everyone who knows better will end up rolling Defiant.

[Modern Angel]

I think everyone's going to roll Defiant ANYWAY. Way cooler motif. I freely admit but still tilt Guardian because I try to always go underdog side... and I love dwarves. Love. LOVE. I'd still go Defiant in a hot minute if I knew they'd be underpopulated.

[Ingmar]

Is there somewhere I can go read up on the lore? I am getting mixed messages here, as people are saying 'the lore is great!' but the only bit I've heard directly is that the factions are named "Guardian" and "Defiant" which seems really generic sounding.

[Draegan]

It's all over the place, but there is some in the wiki.

The story is essentially:

The Blood Storm comes to Telara, this is essentially the big bad guys of each of the 6 elements.
Regulos, of Death, comes down and invades. 
Shit gets fucked up.
People fight back and put them back into their Planes and seal everything behind the "Ward"
Cults pop up regarding each dragon aspect.
Lots of time goes buy.
Human kingdoms are all over the place
The humans in the south develop technology based on magic/sourcestones.
Human fuck shit up.
The ward gets cracked.
The Shade War happens.
Regulos takes control of the human empire.
Shit gets bad.
Telara breaks up.
Humans resurrect technology (Hi2u Defiant) and gain the assistance of other races.  Kelari and Bahmi.
Humans go back to the Gods (hi2u Guardians) and gain the assistance of other races.  Elves and Dwarves

Guardians are a bunch of prissy puritans and god freaks.  They think they can seal the Ward and push back the bad guys.  They think their way is the best and fuck everyone else.  Also Defiants using sourcestone is like heathens pissing on the christian cross.

Defiants are a bunch of tech freaks.  They hate the gods, they think they cause the problem in the first place.  They think they can do better, and are more powerful that the Vigil (gods).  Guardians are just getting in their way and will probably fuck it up again.

Game starts.

[Segoris]

Is there somewhere I can go read up on the lore? I am getting mixed messages here, as people are saying 'the lore is great!' but the only bit I've heard directly is that the factions are named "Guardian" and "Defiant" which seems really generic sounding.

http://telarapedia.com/wiki/Rift:_Planes_of_Telara_Wiki
http://www.riftgame.com/en/game/index.php
http://www.riftgame.com/en/world/index.php

[Cadaverine]

As I understand it, you only get 50 points to spend per role.  Aren't you shooting yourself in the foot by splitting that pool of points between 2, or even 3, souls?  Or am I just not understanding how it all works?

[Modern Angel]

There's a lot of thinking which suggests that, yes, you are shooting yourself in the foot. This is part of why they're loosening up the system and talking about more points and more options.

Re: Lore: There's some generic thrown in with the good stuff. It works best in the big, zoomed out macro view. To contrast with WoW, Azeroth is fucking absurd, terrible kitchen sink stuff when viewed as a whole. When you zoom down into individual zones, however, there are instances were it really works. Rift is like the opposite of that.

[Murgos]

I'm disappointed that the paladin class doesn't really fit the mold of what I'd consider a paladin to be (i.e. no any time heals and from what I saw no buffs, but I really didn't look hard after finding no heal spells  )

I can't stress enough how disappointed I am with how much this game reminds me of WoW (especially given that I've only played it for about 1 1/2 mos and I'm already getting tired of it). The class system appears awesome, I just wish the PvE matched it.

Heh.

Make up your mind.  Do you want the game to be more like WoW or less?  Because it's pretty silly to complain that the Rift Paladin isn't exactly the same as the WoW one and then in the next breath whine about how much the game is like WoW.