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Why does RIFT feel lacking? Could it be you?
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EXACTLY!
It is a trip watching all the pot, kettle, black going on...
...or it was. I'm bored with it now.
I agree that folks that simply state something is garbage and let it go at that, are not really helping anybody out. Much like those that state something is wonderful without any supporting evidence are not really helping anybody out either.
I believe that people need to complain about changes that affect them. I do not think they should settle and just accept things.
No doubt there are people that thoroughly enjoy the new MMOGL genre...
...but there are those of us that want MMORPGs back. You can go through the forums and see you're not alone...
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Want me to show you the Rogue build that lets you do that? A guy used it on me just yesterday in a war front. Actually in the patch 1.5 promo vid they do it again I believe.
There is actually a Warrior tank build that lets me teleport also.
[Mod Edit]
The only thing RIFT was lacking is it was too easy. Real gamers finish the game in under 2 months. This is what happened to me and the guild I was in. All the content was done, and we were just gear grinding. It was boring as hell. Couple that with the fact there were only 4 lame warfront and no Open World PvP? There just isn't enough meat there.
The only reason you like it is because you are slow. I play games until I get bored, which is usually "at the end of the content". If a game doesn't hold my attention that long, there is something more wrong with it. Some people like difficulty, not just easy mode theme park MMO's. I want to get my ass kicked, I want to die, I want to struggle more. And not just at max level, the entire time leveling up. The most fun part is leveling up in games ... not grinding the same raid dungeon 100's of times to get drops.
These idiotic designers make their games so they can be completed and crushed in no time. I want to spend years leveling up, not 2 weeks. There are just different kinds of people, and just because you are some casual player doesn't mean you are right. RIFT was a great game, while it lasted. But there wasn't enough challenging content to keep me going. It was like 50 in 2 weeks or less, a month in, all Expert dungeons were completed and I was geared. End of month 2, all the raid content was cleared and basically on "farm status". Then I unsubbed.
If these companies would just slow it down some, they would be much better games. It is just too bad all the casuals want everything to be so easy. And when I talk about casual, I am not referring to the time played, I am referring to the mind set of the player. I have a 40 hour job and can't play all the time, but when I can, I play hard. I don't walk around the cities staring at flowers and trees all day, I engage in the actual game play.
I do think RIFT has great potential to be amazing, there just isn't enough meat to hold it together. It needs Open World PvP. Non-dumbed down retarded crafting. Maybe some other flavorful/time sink stuff like building houses and what not. For the most part, what it does it does VERY well. The dungeons and raid content I very much enjoyed, until I ran them each 5 times or more, then it just gets old.
You say this and yet I do not remember you ever playing Aion when it launched. That game took forever to get everything in and literally nothing was handed to you.
I was there for 14 months while most everyone qq quit because the leveling took too long and the gear was not easy enough to get.
Never once did I say that any game was good because I like it. Never once, not in a single post that I've ever made, have I ever stated that any game was good because I like it. My liking something doesn't make it any better then it really is, nor does you not liking something simply make it bad. Bad games get reviewed as being bad, don't sell, and usually disapear shortly after they release. Bad games don't get recieve glowing reviews, awards, or get heralded as the best or most succesfull MMO to release since WoW.
I like Mortal Online. I like what Starvault is trying to do, I would never say that in it's current state it's a good game; in fact, in it's current state, it's rather bad. A bad game that I like.
What I originally pointed out was someone calling a game sub-quality because they didn't like it.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it's of bad quality. The Cube may be butt ugly, and not very popular because of that, but that doesn't mean it's a poor quality vehicle. Hence, the repeated fiat analogy, and my not being a fan of the car. Just because I don't like them, and they don't sell as many as Ford, doesn't make them bad cars, or even sub-quality. It just means it's marketted towards another kind of buyer.
I have probably played more games than the large majority of people on this site. Not every game since back in the UO/EQ days until now, but pretty damn close. And, I did play Aion on release. However, the PvP was laggy, unbalanced garbage. Especially coming from WAR, the PvP was horrible. The worst thing being the stunning/knockdown garbage on crits, some of the worst PvP design I have ever seen (especially for a game that had been out for a long time in Korea already). Not to mention how all the objectives were on timers, and you couldn't take them whenever you wanted? How boring and stupid is that?
The PvE in Aion was alright, however, I don't think it was necesarilly difficult, it was just time consuming. Personally, I found it quite annoying running a dungeon for over 3 hours in one sitting, that is just too much, IMO.
When I say difficult, it doesn't mean time involved, I mean like Demon Souls/Dark Souls difficult. I mean like Super Mario Brothers, Kid Icarus, Battletoads difficult. If there is no struggle, there is no satisfaction at the end. Asian games fall into the traps of these horrendous grinds (which I don't really mind personally), but worst of all, grinding on thousands and thousands of mobs to get some stupid item you have to craft, that has a random % chance of happening? It is just bad design. Really bad design.
But in Rift, NO ONE plays a teleporting sniper. No one. It's not a viable build. It takes too much damage and doesn't give out as much as anything else.
You had a guy use one on you yesterday in a warfront. Know how many times I've seen a teleporting sniper in six months? Not once. Not in a dungeon. Not in PvP. No where. It's because people found out that kind of build is crap.. wouldn't work.
You wouldn't even be allowed to play a teleporting sniper in a raid. They'd parse your dps and wonder what the hell kind of build you got, then boot you due to lack of dps.
So Rift shows you that and people expect that's something they can do when in reality, you can but you won't have anyone playing with you.
Besides, the point was the video sure promised a lot of stuff and led people to think one way but when you play the game it's about something else altogether.
"TO MICHAEL!"
But that's not the same as saying you can't. I said they didn't release a different game then they said they were making, you said oh yeah, and mentiion a class build and provide a link.
Someone else points out that you can indeed do what you're implying you can't.
Now you're agruement is that it's not a valid build.
How is it not being a valid build justify an attempt to imply that Trion didn't release the same game they'd been pitching to the media?
Lets cut out the baiting and personal attacks.
Unfortunately, was not the OP's OP a personal attack against everybody that has found some fault in RIFT?
The OP's OP states there is absolutely nothing wrong with RIFT... any issues anybody might have, whatever those issues might be... it is not RIFT, it is the person.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Oh, but didn't you know? When a lot of people don't like a game, it's all the fault of those people. It's not the game. The game's perfect. We silly customers / players don't know what we like, or we simply don't understand the genius behind their Vision(tm)!
Yes, I am being disgustingly sarcastic but there are, apparently, people who actually think this way.
Never you mind the huge background advertisment saying "PLAY FOR FREE", or the email begging us to come back to the game at 40% off the subscription price.
Seconded. The OP's post was baiting, at best, and flat out insulting at worse.
Unfortunately, was not the OP's OP a personal attack against everybody that has found some fault in RIFT?
The OP's OP states there is absolutely nothing wrong with RIFT... any issues anybody might have, whatever those issues might be... it is not RIFT, it is the person.
The OP came off as more of a parent to child lecture. Like most adolescents, I guess I must have just didn't hear that part.
When I read the OP all I got from it was that he was saying people needed to use their imaginations and get immersed and that was what MMORPGs were about. I was like HERE HERE! and posted my story about the perfect raiding MMORPG.
What it comes down to is simple. The customer is always right.
Trion set out to create a game that would attract and hold the most possible subscriptions. If most people vote with their wallets and decide not to play Rift...then Trion did something wrong. That simple.
Players are perfectly willing to use their imaginations and fill in the blanks when they enjoy the game. The fact that players aren't doing that in this case, and are instead choosing to stop playing, says something very clearly about the game itself. These are the same players who have played other MMOs for YEARS...what you might call "known good" subscribers. If they aren't sticking with Rift, there's something wrong with the game.
Someone didn't see Rift and say "I hope I could make a viable teleporting sniper." They saw the video and saw RIFT saying "You can even make a teleporting sniper!" as if it was a viable build. The person didn't go in there thinking that.
Why would a game push a build that's not able to do ANY of the main content (dungeon, PvP, invasions)? I dunno.. because it's smexy on a trailer? So someone gets the game, makes it and finds out they aren't wanted doing anything.
The teleporting sniper is a selling point in a December video pushing Rift and as Puremallace just said, it's AGAIN a selling point in a brand NEW video almost eight months later.
Tell me again about Rift not drawing you in with expectations to be something it wasn't?
"TO MICHAEL!"
rift should be the best game in the world, and it might be someday. the pacing is all wrong, and the build switching system is a cool theory but once implemented it drives all individuality from the player experience.
i played beta, and have been back 3 times since launch. im always super excited to create my character and start the tutorial, but by around level 25, i know im essentially already repeating all that the game has to offer. the pvp lacks context, and the game quickly becomes just another stickman gear hunt.
hopefully, trion takes some more chances and gives the players something meaningful to do. click click kill is just so passe for current mmo's. the production quality of rift deserves more consideration from its devs.
One of the first thngs I do when someone says something is bad, is to take a look at their post history here.
You go all the way back to their first posts, and you can usually see what they were playing when they started posting here. Then you can see what they've been trying after that. When I can see someone spent a good deal of time in, say EQ2, and then moved to MMO after MMO after MMO, and found fault in everyone they played, I know it's not the game most of the time; it is them.
A lot of the people here are trying to find an MMO that gives them the same feeling that first MMO gave them; so they find faults in every game they play.
When you can tell that someone has been jumping around from game to game, and posts nothing but negativety about every game they try, how can it be the game?
The MMO genre is seriously like a drug. How many of us developed some level of addiction with the first MMO we played, or maybe it wasn't the first but the second? How many of us obsessed over that MMO, called in sick so we could stay home and play, and whatnot? I'm willing to be that a magority of us have been there.
Then we got bored. We wanted something new. So we try another MMO, somethings missing though. So we try another one, still something is missing. We repeat this over and over. Some of us do this for several years. Some of us find something that almost gives us that same feeling, at least enough that we'd be willing to stick with it; others though, not so lucky. I don't think that most of us never find that next MMO. We just bounce around. Some give up on the genre entirely.
How can every game possibly be bad? Because if you look, that's effectively what you'll see when you follow the post history for a lot of people that have only negative things to say about a particular game. They're bored, trying to find that next MMO, aren't finding it, and vent on forums.
If I was to come to these forums for the first time to find a game, the first thing I would think is, MMO's must suck, because that's the magority of what I see. People saying this game sucks.
I don't agree with what the OP says, but I do agree with the sentiment. It doesn't aply to everyone that dislikes Rift, but it does aply to a lot of the people on this site. You only need to look through their post history to see that. If you try every MMO that releases, and complain about each one of them, it's not the game.
Viability isn't the same as can't, and someone already said that they got killed in a warfront by someone with that exat build.
I wasn't talking about viability, every MMO has that issue. I was talking about pitching you one thing, and giving you something else; that has nothing to do with whether or not something is viable.
Rifts was pitched as the game it is, and you got that game. If someone has an issue with an MMO that folows the same formula as EQ and WoW, and they saw what Trion was pitching, it seems a little silly that they would buy and then complain about it being like every other MMO.
It's like a self fulfilling prophesy. If you were bored playing WoW and you knew that Rift was going to play just like WoW, why in the world would you even bother trying it? Sure, some people may take to it in that situation, but most aren't.
I undestand that boredom tends to lead to people doing things that they know they won't like, becuase boredom has a tendency to do that to you. I know, I'm stuck in a chair, unable to do much of anything, and staring at a tv screen 6 days out of the week. When someone is bored with the MMO they played for several years, it's kind of hard to find a new one. When I try a new game, and don't like it, it's more often then not my boredom.
Disagree with that all you like, but it's normal human behavior. We don't do this with just video games.
Think about it. If you spent the last few years eating nothing but chinese food, and got bored with it, do you think japanese or korean food is what you're looking for?
rift is an amazing game, unfortuantly I think most people who picked it up where ex wow players and where looking for something different and new. Rift wasnt it
slybacongaming.blogspot.com
I know I have responded to your posts before, hopefully these aren't taken as baiting or flaming.
What percentage are "players" as you've described here? That is, your statement is incomplete without some kind of evidence, i.e. subscription numbers. You can make the above statement about "players" in any MMO or even any computer game. Yes, there is churn. But that's a fact of business, not Rift's failed design that you appear to be claiming.
40%? 50%? 75%? 90%? All different numbers who might have "chosen to stop playing." And how do you know that these same players have played other MMOs for years? Where is your sample data? Where is your access to exit surveys? Where is your access to subscription data? Circumstancial, anecdotal or speculative evidence is just that. You can say you surveyed 1000 players who left the game, and I can say I surveyed 1000 players who stayed and are enjoying it. What's the difference? Is everyone who has played Rift since launch and still enjoys the game somehow missing out on insider knowledge you have on what they should be playing instead?
Are there links to reviews, or news stories, or business reports, or gaming sites with this information? Again, stories from unhappy min/maxers, guesstimates from "measuring" sites, or your entire guild leaving Rift doesn't say to me "players are choosing to stop playing Rift" in large percentages or any percentages for that matter.
Where is the context?
Okay, so provide us with the exact number of bad games that have to exist before the games become good and the player becomes the problem.
If someone dislikes 2 MMORPGs, are they the problem? What about 3? 10?
Is it your claim that there hasn't been any bad games in this genre? If not, can you tell me what the criteria are for deciding if something is a bad game (besides players not liking it, and the game coming up short in objective comparisons).
The reality is you're flailing. You're having a difficult time refuting the arguments of the overwhelming majority of people who disagree with you and the original poster about Rift, so you're trying to discredit people in some arbitrary and pointless way.
I notice you skipped responding to me previous post. I'm sure I know why. The customer is always right. The point of making a game is to get people to play it and make money. If a majority of the players buy a subscription-based MMO and cancel their subs within three months, then there's something wrong with the game...whether those players ever posted on these forums or not.
Did you play during the betas? Do you remember the communication? Do you remember the tweaks?
Then during the headstart - communication began to slip away. Tweaks were replaced by heavy handed nerfs and buffs.
Then we got into the nonsense with Pyros, but hey - they eventually attempted to fix that.
Then we got into the nonsense with ParaChamps. Might have thought they would have learned something from what they did with Pyros, am I right? Nope, oh well.
As if that had not been silly enough...tada Rogues. /facepalm
The thing that probably pained me the most...was that even as of 1.5, the notes from 1.2 still had not been implemented. Oh wait, was it laughing at them saying they did not want Dominators to be dominating? Heh, have to admit that was hilarious. But yeah, that would definitely tie into the craziness they did in attempting to address CC.
Mages needed love. Pyros should have never happened.
Warriors needed love. ParaChamps should have never happened.
Rogues needed love...Three strikes...you're out.
It was as simple as that for me...
I did not expect RIFT to be perfect. However, I did expect the Trion devs not to repeat the same mistakes over and over again...ahem, so perfectly.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
You're obviously asking this, once again, because you KNOW that there aren't any numbers available, because Trion has conveniently neglected to release them. I can't show numbers that show the game is bleeding subs, and you can't show numbers that say it's not.
We get that. We've discussed the evidence at length that leads me to believe that it has, and continues to, bleed subs. Server consolidation is the primary evidence, because it's pretty much impossible for you to claim that the same number of people are playing now that were playing at launch, unless you want to believe that everyone is still subbing and just never logging in. They have half as many servers...and those servers aren't nearly as populated. How can you say that doesn't mean there's less players? There's nothing anecdotal or speculative about that.
Also, there is literally nothing you can say that can refute the facts of the game itself. I've seen it, I've played it. I know what it is and what it does.
Churn is a fact of all business...sure. But what is we're dealing with here is not just even turnover of players joining and players leaving. We're dealing with a player population that is considerably smaller now than it was at launch. So regardless of the exact number of players...the population is GOING DOWN, NOT UP. WoW, at this point in its life, had a population that was exploding. EQ, at this point, also had a population that was exploding.
The fact that for some, the conventional wisdom says that the "new normal" is for a game to lose 50% or more of its players in the first three months doesn't mean I have to accept it. I measure success differently, and I've described that in the past as well.
Success to me, in terms of a subscription MMORPG, involves -
1) Meeting or exceeding the goals set by your business model and target audience. In other words, if you create a game which focuses on the mass-market with the intention of capturing a wide audience and contending with WoW...then you need to actually get those numbers. If you create a game for a specific, focused niche, and get 200-500k players, again, you've met or exceeded your goals. If, however, you shoot for millions of subscribers and end up with 200-500k... you FAILED. Sure, you can bring the bar down and create more realistic goals at that point (like staying in business and just turning a reasonable profit)...but it doesn't change the fact that you failed to do what you set out to do in the first place.
2) Having a growing population over time - this one should be a no-brainer. For a subscription-based game...if your player base is shrinking, something is not right. Why are players leaving instead of inviting their friends and family and playing more?
3) Having average retention rates of more than 3 months. Again, we're talking about games that rely on subscription revenue. Not keeping players interested for even the first three months of your game's life is a fail in that department. If your average sub is 1 month, you are making exactly $0 from subscriptions. Obviously longer is better.
For those wanting to say that server consolidation is a sign of a dying game. Organize this list by the number of low servers and then tell me which company is smarter
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/status
All Trion did was what their playerbase told them to do. Get rid of the extra servers noone is rolling on anyways. Trion threw us a bone and said we could do it for free...included guild transfers which Blizzard just copied at a fee, then kept it free.
I think you're right! WoW having 20 times the number of subscribers as Rift is all just a trick Blizzard is playing with the servers!
Server consolidation is not necessarily a sign of a dying game... but it is definitely a sign of a shrinking game. Rift's population is going down, not up.