Rift: Planes of Telara

[March]

Finally got in and played a Rogue to 12 (Bard, Ranger, Rift).

like everyone else, I positively love the class building aspect of the game... Vanguard without the obvious pre-launch failure.

Since the game really is all about the Character, I have a few things that make me worried that they are not playing to their strength:
1. Character Appearance... second set of Armor for rogue turned me from a street-fighting Bard to a Club DJ (maybe I'm just getting old).  I just don't see how any game that focuses on character as much as Rift can ship without an iteration on LoTR wardrobe feature.

2. Character Mechanics... this is probably some technical aspect of things I don't understand (i.e. game engines and network code, etc) - but everthing feels "floaty" and sluggish.  As much as I hate WoW's art and feel, I play it simply for the responsive character "Crunch."

3. Character Roles... As someone who doesn't mind a little spreadsheet neck-bearding for Class concepts, it concerns me that I cannot quite fathom the mojo for all the Archetypes, Souls, and Roles.  There is simply a wicked over-abundance of DPS souls in every archetype; and, strangely, the idea of 4 "Roles" doesn't quite match with what I can build to fill roles other than DPS.  Another way to put it is this, I can change the color of my magic missile 6 ways to sunday, but the other Roles are simply insert Soul X here (plus fiddle with the point allocation).  This is working at cross purposes to the very best part of their game: Character Flavor and Character Role building.

Of the three concerns, I'd guess that only #3 is still up for grabs before launch.  I'm just not seeing the flow from Archetype to Role, or, not that I don't see it, but I don't think it is currently done very well.  I'm perfectly fine with having all 4 roles performed by *every* archetype with their own type of flavor... what I don't get is the arbitrary cut-off of certain roles from certain Archetypes.  Clerics can do everything, but Warriors are limited to Tank/DPS; Rouges can DPS, Tank, Support; Mages can DPS and Support (maybe main heal) - what is the Architectural Goal here?.  Getting this part of the game right seems to me most critical at the moment.  With 8 Souls per Archetype, the problem is not that they can't give better options, but that the options are (at the moment, hopefully) so shockingly redundant within a given archetype.

[Threash]

The player character races are just too generic, none of them have any ... well, character. I think that's one of my main complaints really.

I agree with this.  At least they did a good job with humans.

[Arrrgh]

Yeah, they needed two more choices per side and a few more outlandish ones. The models themselves I think are great.

Did you look at the dwarf males?

[kildorn]

One of my complaints with the character system is a lack of explaining what does and does not stack between souls. Inside a soul it's usually very clear that you can have one of X spell effect type, but there's no statement that, for example, all shielding spells share a cooldown. So if you have a damage shield from soul X and one from soul Y, soul Y's shield is a waste. That one is nice and obvious, while I question things like stacking % damage modifiers/damage taken debuffs.

[Shatter]

I figured out in Beta 5 that as a bard dexterity and atk power have no impact on bards Cadence skill which has left me shaking my head since dex is supposed to be the primary rogue class stat. 

[Modern Angel]

Did you look at the dwarf males?

Purely subjective time: I am a whore for dwarf anything so this is the wrong question to ask me.

[PalmTrees]

Finally got in and played a Rogue to 12 (Bard, Ranger, Rift).

like everyone else, I positively love the class building aspect of the game... Vanguard without the obvious pre-launch failure.

Since the game really is all about the Character, I have a few things that make me worried that they are not playing to their strength:
1. Character Appearance... second set of Armor for rogue turned me from a street-fighting Bard to a Club DJ (maybe I'm just getting old).  I just don't see how any game that focuses on character as much as Rift can ship without an iteration on LoTR wardrobe feature.

2. Character Mechanics... this is probably some technical aspect of things I don't understand (i.e. game engines and network code, etc) - but everthing feels "floaty" and sluggish.  As much as I hate WoW's art and feel, I play it simply for the responsive character "Crunch."

3. Character Roles... As someone who doesn't mind a little spreadsheet neck-bearding for Class concepts, it concerns me that I cannot quite fathom the mojo for all the Archetypes, Souls, and Roles.  There is simply a wicked over-abundance of DPS souls in every archetype; and, strangely, the idea of 4 "Roles" doesn't quite match with what I can build to fill roles other than DPS.  Another way to put it is this, I can change the color of my magic missile 6 ways to sunday, but the other Roles are simply insert Soul X here (plus fiddle with the point allocation).  This is working at cross purposes to the very best part of their game: Character Flavor and Character Role building.

Of the three concerns, I'd guess that only #3 is still up for grabs before launch.  I'm just not seeing the flow from Archetype to Role, or, not that I don't see it, but I don't think it is currently done very well.  I'm perfectly fine with having all 4 roles performed by *every* archetype with their own type of flavor... what I don't get is the arbitrary cut-off of certain roles from certain Archetypes.  Clerics can do everything, but Warriors are limited to Tank/DPS; Rouges can DPS, Tank, Support; Mages can DPS and Support (maybe main heal) - what is the Architectural Goal here?.  Getting this part of the game right seems to me most critical at the moment.  With 8 Souls per Archetype, the problem is not that they can't give better options, but that the options are (at the moment, hopefully) so shockingly redundant within a given archetype.

I really agree with 1 and 2. After being disappointed with my kelari I rolled a guardian flavor human. Wow does she have some wide, child-bearing hips and an ass to match. They really need some body sliders in char-gen. The running animation moves the shoulders too much. It's a little better than on my kelari, but the exaggerated shoulder movement makes the head look like pong ball bouncing from one side of the screen to the other.

Spell effects so far are really dull. For the most part different colored little blips that fly to the enemy. The tether types are a little better, like stomcaller's electrocute. Knockback is sad though, enemy stays upright and just slides back. Really lacks the punch you get with knockback in CoX.

As for 3, you have to pick three skill trees from some vague descriptions, even the tree previews are unhelpful - it's just information overload. Eventually you wind up with three huge skill trees and a tiny drip of skill points and a feeling of what the fuck do I do now? There's like 8 souls with 50ish abilities each with all different kinds of mechanics (charges, marks, only one armor buff stacks, etc) It's too much to take in, plan for and I just don't like the feeling of blindly stumbling through character development.

[Simond]

There definitely needs to be a more fast travel of some sort. It's bizarre to me that there's not a single "flight path" in the Defiant noob area while there is one in the Guardian one.

That's because the defiants are evil godless heathens who need to suffer for their many sins. 

[Hoax]

I still say its EQ1 with mechanics cobbled from many of the games that came since. It doesn't feel like WoW to me it feels like EQ1 and it looks like EQ1. That sad part is when I think of EQ1 I feel as if everything felt much more handcrafted in terms of what players looked like, gear, zones, monsters, zone storylines and all that.

This game really doesn't have much of that and most importantly I never get loot (ala EQ1) and when I finally do get some it looks identical to the gear its replacing. The items are even more empty and bland than the character creator.

Beyond that I hate diku gameplay and if pvp is going to be this bad (levels mean everything holy shit its just a joke and that makes for fucking terrible world pvp) then I can safely say there is nothing here that would distract me from how much I hate the core gameplay.

Also it does feel floaty as fuck WoW movement and especially WoW jump feels a billion times better, also swimming in Rifts  

I think it will do better than the WAR/AoC level of failure but not by all that much. I think its polish is high enough that people really sick of WoW but who need their fix will be able to stomach it for months maybe even long enough for it to get there ala EQ2 but for most it will be 1-3 months (instead of 2-3 weeks) before they go back to WoW, not playing any MMO or on to the next beta.

I'm comparing Kunark era EQ1 (I didn't play it until then and never got past Ill Omen) to playing a Defiant Warrior to L22 and climbing so I finished Freemarch and moved onto the contested valley with the trolls and I've gotten to the first boss in the dungeon but we only had 3 people so that wasn't going to happen.

[kildorn]

I think I figured out what feels missing to most of the classes for me: spell/ability interaction. The abilities are for the most part "this gives a flash damage boost, this does flat damage, this does a flat dot" with no interaction. WoW seems to have a lot more of "this does X, or Y if Z is applied/procced" stuff that I can't find much of in Rift.

Cabalists seem to have the only real system like that, and in reality all they have is a form of reverse combo points (apply stacks of X, use ability to Y to eat all stacks and do something)

That and the lack of power auras/decent UI modding makes some of the interactive procs a pain to notice. I have one that on my main nuke can proc the ability to instant cast another nuke. Except the spell effect is TINY, and the only way to know it procced is to stare at by buffs.

[Modern Angel]

That's where the main flaw in the gameplay is, yes. There are very few builds that deviate from autoattack/hit buttons in preset order. Compared to WoW's current interactivity and real CHOICE as to when you use a class defining ability it's a bit drab. There are exceptions like Saboteur, presumably Cabalist, Void Knight... but for the bulk of the souls the play is a bit samey.

NOW, that said, if there's one thing I'm fairly forgiving on it's class mechanics. Gross imbalance or obvious bugs are one thing, feel of play and the tweaks that inevitably have to be made once hundreds of thousands of people are breaking your shit are another. My faith in the team they have assembled is pretty high so I'm optimistic that tweaks will be made and made reasonably quickly.

[Nebu]

My faith in the team they have assembled is pretty high so I'm optimistic that tweaks will be made and made reasonably quickly.

How many times will people continue to think like this?  Yes, they have a great dev team. I agree.  I just have no faith in the MMO medium ever producing a quality product at release.  I once loved hopping into every MMO the moment it released.  Now, I'd just rather wait a few months for all of the obvious crap to get fixed before giving my money away.  That and waiting usually gives me the game at half price or less for a vastly better experience.

[March]

That's where the main flaw in the gameplay is, yes. There are very few builds that deviate from autoattack/hit buttons in preset order. Compared to WoW's current interactivity and real CHOICE as to when you use a class defining ability it's a bit drab. There are exceptions like Saboteur, presumably Cabalist, Void Knight... but for the bulk of the souls the play is a bit samey.

NOW, that said, if there's one thing I'm fairly forgiving on it's class mechanics. Gross imbalance or obvious bugs are one thing, feel of play and the tweaks that inevitably have to be made once hundreds of thousands of people are breaking your shit are another. My faith in the team they have assembled is pretty high so I'm optimistic that tweaks will be made and made reasonably quickly.

Agree that the synergy among the souls is uneven; the recent changes to Ranger seemed to go in the right direction of enhancing mechanics versus simply skills... but that will get redundant fast.

The issue feels to me that while they talk about "roles" the class design is really only looking at "soul" interaction.  Are there really more than 3 roles needed for Rift?  What exactly is support?  Off healing? CC? De-buffing? Buffing?  Is "Support" too broad a term?  If the assumption is 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 1 "Support", 2 DPS... do you fail if you bring a CC support when you needed a de-buff support?  CC seems to be limited exclusively to Mages... why is that?  Do we even want CC to be important?  Why does the rogue Archetype have 6 DPS specs and one Support and one Tank soul?  Why not 2 Ranged DPS, 2 Mele DPS, 2 Support, 2 Tank?... and then do that for all the Archetypes (with some variation on the theme).

The idea of Roles is great... Pick a style/flavor that you like, then master various roles... then you have a real bring the player not the spec system.  Right now I just see confusion as to what the Roles really are and how to integrate that into an (otherwise) great Character building paradigm.

[Threash]

My faith in the team they have assembled is pretty high so I'm optimistic that tweaks will be made and made reasonably quickly.

How many times will people continue to think like this?  Yes, they have a great dev team. I agree.  I just have no faith in the MMO medium ever producing a quality product at release. 

We're playing it already, it's a quality product a month and a half before release, it was a quality product three months before release.  As much faith as i have on their dev team i did not pre order the game until i had actually played it.

[Modern Angel]

My faith isn't blind. I said high. This is also a pretty small problem. If it were busted as fuck or buggy or just plain didn't work at all then no, I wouldn't be saying I have faith in them doing tweaks. This isn't the same thing as hoping APB gets fixed from a catastrophic state. This is just a matter of taking the talent trees and playstyle from TBC WoW to WLK WoW.

[Ghambit]

To me the playstyle more mimics AoC's combat system, which also yearned to broaden the horizon from just using the trinity. (controller characters, stance systems, defense, positioning, rituals, etc.)
And if you study the layered mechanics of the two games in regards to skill activation, you realize they're near identical.  i.e. Rift's pacts, action points, etc. are nothing more than a dumbed-down combo system.

Having said that, AoC groups wouldnt be very successful if all they worried about was tank, dps, heal.  It's not that simple.  Properly balanced, Rift should be the same way.  Does the game need this level of interaction to play it well?  Perhaps not, but at the very least it'll help people formulate deeper strategies when tackling difficult situations... instead of just saying "you tank, you heal, you pew pew."  And Trion will be making a big mistake if they easymode-balance their game to the point where this latter comment becomes all that's needed, because at that point people will lose reason for the depth of their own PCs and the depth of Rift's skill trees.

"How do we solve this problem with what we have" will be the norm. in group chat methinks.  Rather than trolling gen. chat looking for the perfect missing piece to the trinity puzzle.

[Sky]

a "class buffet" just sounds like a recipe for low class identity

I disagree with this completely. The soul system is really, really awesome. Unfortunately I don't like the direction they're heading with it (ok, I only did three betas but I had REALLY AWESOME builds for the first two, which were both either removed or nerfed to hell). And it under-delivers and the beta whines will seal that potential "cleric should heal QQ". Could have been the first mmo that preserved class interaction while allowing you to bring any 5 warm bodies to the table and allowing them to self-configure (on the fly, no less) to the needs of the group.

I do wish there was a little more synergy in certain trees - for example, it seems to me like the Saboteur soul has to be your primary soul if you take it at all (or a zero-point wonder for the glue bomb), especially since you can't really use other class's combo builders with Saboteur finishers, or vice versa.

That was the death of the first beta build I had. When I went to make my Inquisitor/Sentinel in the second beta, they had removed all the awesome +life dmg and crit from Sentinel that made the Inq really an awesome build. While I can see that making sense from a development standpoint (having such tight synergy between a strong dps and heal soul, especially with more points now), it also made the Inq less effective and less fun to play and ultimately I changed to a melee cleric.

And despite being able to say I probably won't play this game, I can think of only one other dev team that has had it's shit together on the level this one has.  They'll do fine.

Yep. As I said, if mmo were my thing, I'd be playing it like crazy. I'd bitch, but it's definitely going to be a solid game. Hell, if money weren't an issue right now, I'd probably play it just to do the initial BC rush. It's not like I'm not going to play Rift because I'm playing another mmo.

Nebu, it's a solid game. And I don't like mmo. If you like mmo (and I know you do), you should be checking it out (and taken me up on my offer, you'd already have been playing it, but you can still find VIP invites). By your metric (will you get a month out of it), you'll be more than pleased. Remember when I say I'm not going to be playing that I'm both broke and not a huge mmo fan.

[Ashamanchill]

"How do we solve this problem with what we have" will be the norm. in group chat methinks.  Rather than trolling gen. chat looking for the perfect missing piece to the trinity puzzle.

I fully expect LFM Tank within a week. Sure they are giving people the tools they need to tank themselves, but I bet most of them just say 'I don't tank' and look for someone who will.

[Sky]

Running through Iron Tomb with random people who had played warriors to 20 as dps and then decided to try tanking (the famous quote would be "What is aggro?") pretty much puts a point on the weakness of the otherwise awesome system. But for vets who do take the time to learn at least a couple roles, it could be pretty awesome.

[Ghambit]

Name me one lvl 20 instance (which is typically the "intro dungeon") in ANY game where you had to have a quality group (let alone perfect synergy) to complete it.
Does it stay this way till the later game?

[HaemishM]

Finally got some time to play the beta event this week. I don't think I'll be buying this. I dig the lore and storyline and the atmosphere. The class system seems cool, though I never got high enough to start mixing and matching souls. But the gameplay reminds me of a more twitchy WoW. It's good, but not good enough that I want to pay $50 and a sub fee. I was surprised at how well it ran on my older machine. It's certainly one of the better DIKU style MMOG's to come out in a while, but it's not so different that I want to spend money on it when I have F2P options and other games to play.

[Modern Angel]

Does it stay this way till the later game?

With only Beta available stuff: no, they get tougher without being overtuned or crazy.

[Draegan]

You just broke the NDA!

[Modern Angel]

Did not! That one in Scarlet Gorge, whatsitsbutt, is in and way different from Iron Tombs.

[Sky]

You should edit that to reflect the Scarlet Gorge comment and remove the other parts.

Anyway, my point wasn't that you need perfect synergy to do IT (you don't, we were winging it with some pretty wild group lineups). But you do absolutely need a tank who understands basic tanking concepts like aggro management and pulling.

[Modern Angel]

Edited to be sure.

Yeah, you do need that. On the flip side, we all learned that at some point. Tanks will still be in semi-scarce supply with good tanks even scarcer. But that's just a flaw of the Trinity and Rift is firmly in that mode.

[kildorn]

Could use some tanking UI improvements, too. We need to stop pretending games based around math should hide the math completely, and let me know how much of a threat lead I have on things if you want a threat based system.

Otherwise it's just a surprise when a mob or three just decide to run off somewhere else.

[Draegan]

I'm all for numbers, but we don't need them.  Some audio or visual cue that is easily interpreted would suffice.

[sam, an eggplant]

The job of a diku tank is to generate as much threat as possible at all times, since they aren't traditionally forced to tradeoff survivability or damage for threat. Survivability is passive and/or cooldown-based and damage comes from hitting all your normal buttons. Rift may have changed that paradigm, I haven't looked at the mechanics to say for sure, although I kinda doubt it. From my fairly brief time playing the game, they seem to stick very close to fundamentals.

Anyway TL/DR, DPS classes need threat displays, not tanks.

[Merusk]

This game..     It's a DIKU with raiding and some pvp thrown in.  It's exactly what you'd expect from such a game.  If you hate DIKUs you'll hate it.

Plenty of folks clamoring over it calling it "Better than Wow" and "What all mmos should have been like" from what I've seen around so it'll do well.   Funny how I recall folks saying the same thing about WoW 6 years ago, and now they are the EQ everyone's trying to flee.  Bonus in that WoW have had a GOD-style stumble with some of the Cata stuff.

[Hawkbit]

I'm all for numbers, but we don't need them.  Some audio or visual cue that is easily interpreted would suffice.

Cheese idea, but contextually a decent idea would be a simple speech bubble over the mob's head with $*%^@ in it:  the more symbols the greater the threat in relation to the player.  Tanks want more symbols, everyone else wants none.  Or you could do target rings at their feet, but those are harder to see.  I'm about 85% sure EQ had something like that around Omens of War xpac, based off the guild AAs.

[Falconeer]

Ok, I am not by ANY mean saying this game is hard. But is it just me or is it _slightly_ harder than similar DIKUs, as in mobs hit harder and aggro more at lower levels? Is it me or it's slightly easier to die than in your average other MMORPGs? Just curious about what you all think. I am aware it might be just my class combination or that I am rusty and distracted. And in case you didn't notice, I said _slightly_ harder.

[Rasix]

I get the feeling that some classes feel weak at lower levels (no idea how they play higher up).  While a ranged rogue, warrior, and melee cleric steam rolled all of the newbie stuff, a caster (necro/warlock) and a melee rogue got pounded pretty bad and could die if there was a single add.

[Hayduke]

It is a little harder.  But mostly it's because the mob density is really high in the wilderness once you get into the teens and the respawn rate is insane (maybe this is turned up right now because of beta or population density in newbies).  Not really all that pleasant, especially when mobs give next to no exp in this game (almost all of the xp seems to come from quests).

[Tarami]

Ok, I am not by ANY mean saying this game is hard. But is it just me or is it _slightly_ harder than similar DIKUs, as in mobs hit harder and aggro more at lower levels? Is it me or it's slightly easier to die than in your average other MMORPGs? Just curious about what you all think. I am aware it might be just my class combination or that I am rusty and distracted. And in case you didn't notice, I said _slightly_ harder.

Mobs seem to hit exponentially harder the more you have on you, since one mob is generally a cake in the park while two are tough and three are fatal. It's like avoidance has a cooldown that makes mobs automatically hit when you're getting hammered, or something similar. Whatever it is, my warrior has issues with adds and multi-pulls. Combined with the mob density mentioned, I die a lot.