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Dynamic world
Ive seen lots of posts lessening the importance of rifts and invasions ("they get old fast", "they are always the same"....). Ive been in most of the betas and fact is only now im truly beginning to grasp how much of a dynamic feel they give to the world.
Its true, having an invasion where your questgiver is can be a pain in the ass, but everything in this game, from the reward system to public grouping is engineered to make you want to fight that invasion, so chances are you wont have to do it alone. Yesterday i tried to stave off with a group of strangers a large series of invasions in the middle of an event . We gave hell easily to them , feeling as gods of the mmo world and thinking "god this is easy mode" ...then out of the blue at least 40 of those invasions attack us at once, creaming us (we took down at least a third of them before croaking out). That felt as something i had never felt before in an mmo ..it felt epic. The only thing that the scene lacked was a troll smoking a cigar and saying something like "i love the smell of burnt human flesh in the morning... it smells like victory".
Invasions and events apart, only saga of ryzom has mob AI as advanced as rift has. Mobs attack each other...not only invading mobs but your regular run of the mill wolf will attack that golden maw miner if he gets too near (and he will...there are lots of those intermobs fights everywhere if you watch for it) Add to that the thrill of that abyssal clique spawning from a foothold with a location in mind and the plan of slaughtering anything along the way, guardian, defiant or AI controlled and you have a dynamic, imprevisible world in which to play.
And , as someone pointed out in this forums, the best thing about this system is not only what has been done with it, but what can be done. They are an efficient and fun way of adding new content and making it reachable to all the players.
Comments
Dynamic World has migrating mobs, change of seasons, capturable cities, constructable houses / cities, terraforming tools, ...
None of it is in Rift. The silly invasions are just an occasional random nuisanse, don't interchange it with a dynamic world.
REALITY CHECK
I think you've gone a bit too far with that. In the same way that there is a range between a full blown sandbox game and a full blown themepark game, there is also a range between a totally static world and a totally dynamic world.
Rifts make the world feel a lot more dynamic that most MMOs out there. The effects are not permanent and thus lose points due to that however. Also, players strive to keep the world static by destroying the rifts and invasions. It would definitely be more interesting if the player actions or inactions were the cause that put changes in the world.
But still, Thillian has a point there. A few dynamic effects don't make a dynamic world. It's best to use wording that describes rifts as what they really are.
He's right though. How are Rifts dynamic, in any way, shape or form?
Random aggressive spawn?
That change the world around them locally or in case of invasions zone wide?
No more than a regular rare spawn-boss that drops super item, which is basically in every game. In other words, it's just a periodically-repeating fully scripted event shamelessly ripped from Tabula Rasa.
REALITY CHECK
In every game? Are you commenting on Rift through personal experience or are we talking here on things in theory? Because in game when you are near a rift the world is visibly different in its vicinity and when there is an invasion happening you don't need a quest announcement to tell you that it's happening, you can see it everywhere. From the sky turning to whatever colour the invaders favor to quest hubs been overrun and become inaccepssible and taken over by rift participants.
I do agree. The world is not dynamic in the sense that it'll be any different in say months from now. But it does change. The changes last a couple hours only though.
I don't think that the game you envision is possible or made yet. Maybe Archage will succeed, but for now they are developing, thus we don't know how complete their feature list will be in the final game.
Indeed I did, and it extremly resembled Tabula Rasa invasions, very similar graphics, totally same system.
I'm glad we both agreed that the world is not dynamic.
REALITY CHECK
Definitely not dynamic.
Definitely not static either.
Somewhere in between.
I agree the world is not dynamic, in a persistant way. I.e. Rifts spawn and temporarily affect the world but within hours just despawn and the world goes back to its initial state.
Shame really, because if they would have pushed the envelope the world could be more dynamic. E.g. if the Rift spawns were to actually be able to hold an area, even a town, indefinately then the world could really change. But as it is now they are just a temporary distraction.
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At some point in the alpha/beta phase the rifts/invasions were indeed taking over outposts and towns permanently or at least were not despawning. My wild guess is that the alpha testers did not like it, thus the developers kept the invasions on a timer.
You still get threads on how rifts are "ruining" their questing, even with the current status.
Dynamic world in my experience so far:
It's being in a grassy field when I zone into a warfront...and find myself in a fiery hell of demons when I return.
It's going afk at a quest hub, and coming back to find I've been handed a new one by a 50-foot stone giant.
It's going to my enemy's zone and opening rifts right next to them and watch the rift mobs slice and dice their quest mobs..and my enemies.
It's standing in the middle of the road adjusting my key bindings, when out of nowhere comes a pack of glowy rabid wolves decide that I'm what's good for dinner.
It's when I'm taking a portal back to Perspice and seeing 30 elites ripping my questgiver a new one and I see some poor schmuck run in and try to solo them all ... and then I join him...we both get pwned...then more help comes...and we start to win...then as a raid 15 of us hunt down more waves of invasions/rifts...then 3 hours are gone...in what seems like 10 minutes...
That is not what I would call a dynamic MMORPG world, that are just some roaming mobs with a little visual effects added (i.e. the grass changing to "fiery hell").
However, within hours, the state of the world always goes back to the initial state which makes the world not really changeable, i.e. not dynamic in my eyes.
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Well, the game is called 'Rift', referring to these interdimensional openings where monsters pur out. I think everyone would agree that this is the game's flagship feature.
Anyone with half the mind should have known from the start that dealing with these invasions is inevitable, so if they didn't like being interrupted with their quests, they played the wrong game.
Anyone with half the mind should also anticipate that while defending against invasions feels 'epic' while it's new, it will eventually wane, gets repetitive, and ultimately get annoying. After all, the players seem to be always in the defensive stance. There's no apparent solution to this recurring phenomenon. On the other hand, if these Rifts are gone, what would we make of the game then?
I'm wondering what more they could do with the rift idea...
Perhaps there are two camps of gamers, those who still like the traditional quest driven system and those who want something more out of it. Rifts is basically putting an extra layer on top of an otherwise traditional quest driven MMORPG. So the ideal postion to be would be where you would please the people looking for traditional questing, while at the same time give enough diversion to those looking for things above that model.
As I said in some other thread, players in Rift are struggling to keep the world static, while the monsters are trying to take over and change everything. It would be more interesting if the players were the ones pushing for changes. How that could be accomplished, I have no idea. Perhaps through invasions in native rift zones. Perhaps through a lost zone to the rifts where players need to constant fight to take it back. That dynamic scenery change system they are using can be used for lots of interesting stuff, that's for certain.
It have a lot to do with how often the rifts and invasions trigger. If it is too often people will get tired bloody fast, if it is rare they will feel more fun.
I dunno how often they open up now but in the beta it was all the time. Trion will probably have to work a little on the exact timing.
*sigh*
Another example how the casual players *cough* WoW players *cough* are ruining the genre by crying that the game is not easy enough. Those people are really killing of any possibly innovation that is introduced in the genre and another reason why WoW was the worst thing that could happen to the MMORPG genre.
Bohoo.. I cannot turn in my quests...
For **** sake this is an MMORPG, team up with some people and do something about it instead of crying to the devs!
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Rifts make the world feel a lot more dynamic that most MMOs out there. The effects are not permanent and thus lose points due to that however. Also, players strive to keep the world static by destroying the rifts and invasions. It would definitely be more interesting if the player actions or inactions were the cause that put changes in the world.
But still, Thillian has a point there. A few dynamic effects don't make a dynamic world. It's best to use wording that describes rifts as what they really are.
Look up some definitions for dynamic on the web. Dynamic basically means "changing". When you're talking about programmed systems, it can go so far as "changing on demand". The definition doesn't include, "Make a change and have it be permanent". The world is dynamic because it changes based on whether rifts in a particular area are open or not. You can open rifts on demand, changing that section of the world. That makes it dynamic. In fact, returning to the original state fits in with the definition of 'dynamic'.
That does not, however, make it a sandbox.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Taking back the lost zone is actually a pretty good idea.
The problem anyways with the rifts is that they basically are all the same so only playing them will get old pretty fast, just like if you play only one type of quests (like FEDEX or kill 10 rats quests). Yes, they do have bosses sometimes but that is not enough if you want it as a large optional system to quests.
Rifts are a good idea but I rather have their spawn rate down a lot and make them bigger (with larger reward) instead so people get happy instead of annoyed when they open up.
In that case, every online game world is dynamic, because one time there's a player standing next to you, and the other time there isn't. Dynamic world has its own generally accepted definition, with the list of features I mentioned at the start. Don't trivialize, and say every mmorpg has a dynamic world, because that doesn't really make your point any more valid.
REALITY CHECK
Rift has dynamic events, but it is not dynamic world (or not more depending on the definition than any other MMO out there). Although it would be great if events could change the world, that might be a step to be taken in a next MMO. For now I'm already pretty satisfied with the events. They make the world more alive and challenging. For me that certainly makes a difference to most MMO's I've played till now. That and the soul system.