Rift: Planes of Telara

[Kageru]

Yes, but it's still noise and confusion with no gain to the new player. It would be much more useful if there was a "primary" soul and secondary souls only contributed powers that did not replicate your existing ones. The whole thing sounds like a balance quagmire though. Should be fun to watch.

I'm getting a feeling for Rifts are but I still have no idea how they intend to balance challenge, execution variety and progression in open world and free-form encounters. I'm assuming it is going to end up being a "zerg the boss" which will be fun but ultimately a diversion from the most challenging content. Which is probably going to be instanced raid content just like WoW so it can be controlled, balanced and scripted.

[sam, an eggplant]

They are also why I did not like the game.

[Nebu]

I'm still waiting for someone to answer a simple question for me:

Based on your beta weekend experience, why should I want to play this game and is it fun?

[Hawkbit]

If you like WoW's questing, you like WAR's public quests and you like new lore, then it's worth playing.  If you hate all those things, then you'll hate this.  It is fun. 

Also, super-mega optimization went through on graphics.  With my Q6600/8800gtx/4gig I'm running locked 54fps on low specs, 24-30fps on Ultra.  Ultra.  On a 8800gtx.  That's a three year old card. 

As far as the souls are concerned, most of the players they pull in will have already played WoW.  They're going to be mildly familiar with how to place talent points.... so while there is a lack of newbie friendliness about the soul system, it's okay.  Not many players are going to be true newbies.  You'll get the hang of it fast.

[Threash]

I'm still waiting for someone to answer a simple question for me:

Based on your beta weekend experience, why should I want to play this game and is it fun?

Think it's been answered plenty of times, most people liked the rifts and the soul system plus the game is very polished and bug free.

[Margalis]

Looks like this is set to answer the question "so are people bored with WOW yet?"

[Nebu]

Think it's been answered plenty of times, most people liked the rifts and the soul system plus the game is very polished and bug free.

I guess I must have missed it between the semantics debates and the cries over NDA violations.  

Thanks to both of you for the comments though!

[sam, an eggplant]

If Rift had released in its current state with full content up to the level cap before WoW:WOTLK, it would have been absolutely huge. As is, I don't feel any particular need to play any more of the beta. Polish alone doesn't cut it any more. MMOs are a moving target. You need to compete with the market leader now, not its state four years ago.

I don't want to kill 6 bears and collect their uterii unless there's neat scripting justifying it like WoW:Cataclysm or a fully voiced story with branching responses and decisions like SWTOR.

If the game is really about the rifts, then why have WoW:TBC-quality questing at all? Focus on the rifts and make them cool. Not just kill 3 waves of monsters, actual encounters with stories and consequences, like Guild Wars 2 promises. That's evolution. Rifts is navel-gazing.

Rifts' major failing will be remembered by history as their lack of ambition.

[Modern Angel]

Looks like this is set to answer the question "so are people bored with WOW yet?"

If they're not yet (I sort of am already and the xpac came out three weeks ago) I bet they will be in March or April when Rift releases.

[sam, an eggplant]

Also, am I the only one who when they first heard about this game thought to themselves "Awesome! A MMO based on the ancient Palladium Rifts RPG!"

One of my all-time favorites, alongside Torg.

[Sky]

This sort of duplication within a "class" and ambiguity is not a good thing.

The way it used to be, people complained you could get a 'gimped' soul. So some of the souls have been fleshed out with more redundant early skills to ease up on that. I favored having specialized souls that you simply couldn't use on their own, no early nukes, etc. Ah well. LCD there.

But beyond that, if you look at the necro abilities, they work within the necro framework, giving charges the pet can use to heighten its abilities. The warlock works alongside that with a lifetap dot pretty well.

Biggest single problem I've seen this beta, compared to the first one especially, is that they've gutted a lot of the cross-soul specialization. The cleric I had built for the first beta was based on +life damage and crits on life spells. Almost that entire setup was gone, and the same souls didn't work together and I ended going with an entirely different setup.

Playing with the soul combinations was a lot of fun, and I like the way they hand out the souls better now...but the downside is I don't like the changes to the souls themselves. They seem to be more stand alone than they were before, yet they've made changes (more points) to encourage using them together while taking away many things that made them work together.

Personally, fuck the new players, you think there's a whole lot of people who will pick up RIFT as their very first mmo? And then they're only new for a couple hours. I'd rather be allowed to play with the cool soul system, getting three souls in the newbie area is SO MUCH better, and being able to set up any combination by the time you hit 20 or whatever, that's just the way it should be. Before I was stuck with my choices, tough luck charlie. And even then, I was severely restricted in what I could do, might as well be class-based at that point. Right now I can pick from three types of healer, a few different dps, and even a tank soul...on my single cleric character. Now...I'm not sure I'm going to tank IT with a cleric, but having those kind of options is what has me excited about this game, the possibility of no more "Sorry, we need class X not YOU" exclusionary BS that makes 'social' games suck balls.

Ahem.

[Modern Angel]

Also, am I the only one who when they first heard about this game thought to themselves "Awesome! A MMO based on the ancient Palladium Rifts RPG!"

One of my all-time favorites, alongside Torg.

Palladium thought so. They sued. They didn't win.


They sue a lot.

[Draegan]

The soul system is indeed innovative, but it's presented in the worst way possible. The amount of choice and lack of explanation is paralyzing, like going to an asian supermarket to buy noodles and being faced with an entire aisle full of different types, all labeled in Cantonese and seemingly identical to the untrained eye. They need to slowly walk players through the mechanic, not toss us in the pool and see if we swim.

The ability duplication needs to go away. When a new player gets two spells with a 2.0s casting time that do exactly the same type and amount of damage in the first half hour of play, something is very wrong. This is one spot where they made a mistake deviating from the market leader. WoW carefully controls how many buttons players are expected to manage.

To put it another way, I chose warlock for my second soul, saw that "void bolt" was absolutely identical to "plague bolt", and took it off my bars. Then I put a point in and saw that my new "dark touch" DoT was identical to "necrosis". Took that off my bars too. As a developer, is that the kind of experience you want for your newbies?

Before anyone says it, I realize that I was supposed to take it off my bars, because talents further up the tree buff each tree's basic abilities. That's not the point. The point is that this is a confusing, unpolished, generally shitty newbie experience. I expect to have my hand held and be fed a constant diet of concentrated coolness for my first hour or so of play. I did not get that.

Also while the graphics are pretty, they suffer from shimmering textures, stuttering, and pop-in on my 5850. Oh, and there was an invisible wall right across the road about 20 feet up the hill from where you leave the newbie area. Invisible walls? Really? At least put a mountain there or a chain link fence or something.

You were really confused with the different souls?  Each soul needs the tools of the tree in case a person wants to use it as their main soul so it has to be self sufficient in it's own abilities.  You can't change that.

[sam, an eggplant]

Of course you could change it. Every mage archetype needs a spell that throws some sort of energy, right? So you give it to them at level 1.

Necromancer talents turn that bolt into death energy that also buffs their pet.

Warlock talents turn that bolt into death energy that also heals them for part of its damage.

Pyromancer talents turn that bolt into fire energy that also has a small DoT attached.

Chloromancer talents turn that bolt into life energy that also buffs their self-healing.

And so on and so forth, for all the "basic" abilities-- of which there wouldn't be all that many, really. A direct damage projectile, a DoT, some sort of shield, etc. Once you get beyond those basic abilities, the specs then branch out.

[Sky]

That's pretty much how it is, except you can mix and match, or just not use redundant ones. For example, as a necro I use the necro bolt and dot but also the warlock lifetap dot, because I lean necro heavy. I also have tried it leaning to warlock, but early on I don't have enough points to make that viable. Actually, I did take chloro, too. So I get the benefit of radiant spores, then the necro dot, the warlock lifetap dot and then nuke with the necro bolt while the pet beats on it. Where is the fail? That plays pretty awesome. And this is still within the newbie instance.

In your system, I'd be tied to one of them rather than getting the best of all three, and mixing them to fit the situation.

[Draegan]

It also ruins synergy.  There is a Chloro first tier talent that increases my intelligence every time I cast a Life spell.  How do I differentiate it between the two souls if we merge attack spells.  Chloro has a DOT that heals the group, Necros just have a DOT.  Both do different damage and have different durations.

The easiest solution is to not just put the spells on your hotbar, or just read the description and notice one does 30 damage and the other does 50 and you have talents augmenting the latter so therefore the first one is useless to your build.

[sam, an eggplant]

In your system, I'd be tied to one of them rather than getting the best of all three, and mixing them to fit the situation.

No, you would have all of them. You start off with "energy bolt", doing plain-jane 100 damage, say.

- If you put points into the necro talent for the bolt spell, it gives your pet a stacking buff for each hit.
- If you then invest in the corresponding warlock talent, it also drains life as a percentage of damage done.
- If you also go with the chloromancer talent, each hit triggers a heal over time.
- If you decide to go with the pyromancer, it adds X% of direct damage as a fire DoT over the next 4s.
- If you spec pastamancer, it adds alfredo sauce to your linguini.

And so on and so forth. By the end of the day, your energy bolt spell kicks much ass (and is best accompanied by a caesar salad and a nice chianti).

One button, modified by talents. All mages press that same button, but it does vastly different things depending on your spec. Every point you invest actually does something worthwhile, whereas now they just unlock abilities you will probably never use. Less confusing, more awesome.

That's how I would do it, piloting my designing armchair after dipping my toes into the game for a couple of hours.

[Lantyssa]

I'd like it if the bolt spells stacked like that.  Having one bolt that applies my necro pet buff and refreshes my life tap plus increases my healing might be a bit excessive though.  As it functions now, it means I have to choose which to cast and in what rotation.  Do I work on buffing my pet?  Do I want to decrease the cast time of the bolt that refreshes my life tap?  Is it still worth buffing both since it means I can refresh life tap with a quick cast and can quickly ramp up my pet damage?

Having the 'duplicate' dots is not a problem though.  It means there are two dots running at the same time, providing twice the damage.  That's a powerful benefit.

Is it complicated?  Yes.  But it allows one to play around with combinations other games would never let one consider.

[Ratama]

Looks like this is set to answer the question "so are people bored with WOW yet?"

Warhammer already answered that 2 years.  Question is, can people responsible for that trainwreck (and others) somehow keep the million+ people that will try their game this time?

Having one bolt that applies my necro pet buff and refreshes my life tap plus increases my healing might be a bit excessive though.

Not when everyone else has commensurate abilities.

Too many crappy buttons vs too few awesome buttons... I'd rather have awesome.

[Rendakor]

One catch-all bolt removes an element of skill from the PVP; the system as it exists allows for considerable variation and choice when you cast spells. Having one button do it all would make gear (or class imbalance) play a larger role by removing player skill from the equation.

[Ratama]

Removing multiple mostly redundant buttons from the hotkey bar would be worth losing one element of skill.

[Draegan]

You guys should stop putting every single ability on the hotbar and trying to use them constantly.  If you end up speccing for both bolt spells then you're like those people who spec for melee hunters in WOW or like speccing for shield slam as a dual-wielding fury warrior.

[Malakili]

On a different note, I like the flavor of the Defiant a TON more than the guardians.

[Threash]

You guys should stop putting every single ability on the hotbar and trying to use them constantly.  If you end up speccing for both bolt spells then you're like those people who spec for melee hunters in WOW or like speccing for shield slam as a dual-wielding fury warrior.

This, mostly.  I did find it annoying that it kept adding abilities to my hotbar, but it is easy enough to remove them.

[Draegan]

You guys should stop putting every single ability on the hotbar and trying to use them constantly.  If you end up speccing for both bolt spells then you're like those people who spec for melee hunters in WOW or like speccing for shield slam as a dual-wielding fury warrior.

This, mostly.  I did find it annoying that it kept adding abilities to my hotbar, but it is easy enough to remove them.

I think you might be able to toggle this on and off.  I noticed some hotbar options, but didn't really look at them fully.

[Ratama]

On a different note, I like the flavor of the Defiant a TON more than the guardians.

Aye... hard to imagine that the Defiant won't be much, much more popular than the Guardians.

That, combined with no third faction and crappy PvP mechanics... not optimistic about Rift's PvP atm.

[Draegan]

Well outside warfronts the only PVP we will see is probably Open World stuff and they haven't mentioned anything about open world objectives.  What I can imagine though is once both factions start leveling in the same zones and you have very large rifts to fight over.  That could be interesting.

Remember there are Raid Rifts.    Time for griefing raid targets.

[Modern Angel]

I wasn't aware that anyone SHOULD be optimistic about Rift's PvP. Is it remotely a main thrust of the game? At least I haven't seen it presented as such.

[Rendakor]

I didn't even know it had PVP at all until Ratama started ranting about PVP souls a page or so ago.

[Draegan]

There is as much PVP as there was in WOW prior to Arenas as far as I know.  It's a PVE game almost entirely.

[Modern Angel]

So he's basically being "that guy".

[Lantyssa]

PvPers never change.  If a game allows so much as a duel they think it should be the primary focus of the game.

[Tarami]

PvPers never change.  If a game allows so much as a duel they think it should be the primary focus of the game.

War never changes.

[Sky]

There's a reason I set Faeblight (rp pve) as the BC server ;)

In theory, I love pvp. In reality, people are horridly broken.

[sam, an eggplant]

One catch-all bolt removes an element of skill from the PVP; the system as it exists allows for considerable variation and choice when you cast spells. Having one button do it all would make gear (or class imbalance) play a larger role by removing player skill from the equation.

This is just the bolt. If you look at the early abilities in all talent trees, they all share a few similar abilities. Every mage tree has an energy bolt, some kind of DoT, a shield, etc. They are core abilities that they all share. Once you get deeper in the tree they diverge so skill duplication wouldn't be an issue.

I don't actually care about PvP, but I do think they made the right choice completely separating PvE and PvP skill trees.

Oh, and one more thing-- having to go to the trainer to train rank X+1 of your fireball spell sucks. This is particularly annoying when you're training effectively the same spell three times, then taking two of them off your bars. Awesome, I made level 7! Time to go train void bolt 3, parmesan topping 3, and fireball 3! I imagine at later levels you get access to all 8 soul trees, so you end up training a total of eight identical bolt spells when you level. During design sessions, how did nobody think of this as a problem?

This is another spot where Rift could learn from WoW, where you train abilities once and they scale as you level. WoW also tells you what you can train as you level, so you can plan when you want/need to train. It's a recent interface improvement but again, you need to compete with the market leader now, not what it looked like 5 years ago.