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[Column] Rift: Returning to RIFT

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Comments

  • MondoA2JMondoA2J Member Posts: 258

    Game is fine. I wish all the best luck in the universe.

    Just was kinda ugly for my tastes.

    MMORPG Gamers/Developers need a reality check!

  • GameByNightGameByNight Hardware and Technology EditorMMORPG.COM Staff, Member RarePosts: 793
    Originally posted by strangiato2112

    "They listened to their players and reacted. When the tides turned towards three-faction PVP, RIFT added Conquest. When players wanted solo and small-group dungeons, Chronicles were introduced. When they asked for housing, they delivered the hands-down best and most customizable system this side of Minecraft."

    Come back to reality a little here, this is ridiculous.

     

    The three faction PvP was *not* a major request of the community.  The community (in general) wanted meaningful open world PvP.  Conquest, as its an instanced battleground, does not provide that.  What the three faction PvP likely was is rushing to add it in before GW2 launch.  Don't try and act like this was Rift listening to their players.

    And the housing, while fantastic, is still not as good as EQ2.  Its a near direct copy of EQ2 actually, just EQ2's is a bit deeper because its been out longer.  At least give the proper credit here to EQ2.  Rift's housing is the closest thing to EQ2, not Minecraft.

    It does have the best f2p model from a f2p players perspective though (the sub option is pretty terrible though...it only exists to take advantage of people who prefer to sub instead of rewarding them for their dedication)

     

    The 800 lb Gorilla in the room with Rift is it has a soulless game world and is the possibly the least immersive AAA option out there.   If you care about this stuff, there are far better options than Rift.  If you don't and only care about the carrots, then Rift is one of the best games on the market.

     

    Thanks for the comment! I have to disagree with you though and on nearly everything, so maybe we just have different tastes.

     

    While you're right that the RIFT community wasn't actively seeking three faction PvP (why would most players think of it when there were only two factions?), the larger MMO community has been vocally crying out for it since pre-WAR and even moreso with the build up to Guild Wars 2. They put it in to preempt GW2? I don't doubt that they did, but that doesn't make it bad. RIFT became one of the few MMOs to have three faction RvR and, after some time to work out the hitches, it turned out to be a lot of fun -- so long as you are into large scale, zerg-PvP (which happens in any objective based, high player count battleground). It would have been nice to see it take place in the open world, but short of significantly re-designing parts of the game it wasn't going to be pulled off well. Just look at Wintergrasp in WoW. 

     

    For housing, I disagree EQ2 is better but that may also be because their system gets so little press. How is it better? In RIFT, you're given a big space and extremely customizable tools. What's more, the most creative dimensions are downright astounding. Players can move, resize, tilt, etc any object to make it fit as a building block. You see people building floating ships with canon ports, castles, tree houses, enchanted gardens... the sky is the limit. Or your plat on hand. Either way, if that exists in EQ2 please point me towards it. I am willing to be convinced otherwise and would love to see more examples of player creativity at work. But the sheer depth of the builds being made in RIFT is easier to associate with Minecraft than typical "use this hook/size this painting" stuff we usually think of with MMOs.

     

    And finally, about the game not having a soul. I would have agreed only in terms of narrative delivery preceding Storm Legion. Vanilla quests are uninspired, no doubt about it. I feel that SL brought some much needed focus, however. There are simply fewer quests at each hub making it much easier to hold and follow the main story thread. That said, using Carnage Quests as a primary vehicle to replace the throwaway, unremarkable ones? Not a good idea. They feel grindy.

     

    To that point, I agree with previous posters about the 50-60 leveling experience. I don't think it's that players are "too soft" for long leveling curves (although many are), I think it's that the game spends 50 levels letting players level up quickly and then promptly throws the breaks on. Where before you would do -- throwing a number out there -- 50 quests to level up, Storm Legion ups it to 350. It feels like a wall. I get the sense that the developers didn't intend it that way because it significantly speeds up when you add in dungeons, hunt rifts, and zone events. They just did a terrible job of emphasizing that to players. Again, 1-50 set one precedent (you can ignore them with little penalty) and then switched to another with no notice (ignore other activities at your own peril). 

     

    The stories being told, however, are much better. They are deeper, more mature, and all around more interesting. 

     

  • bubalubabubaluba Member Posts: 434
    Originally posted by psysention

    i played rift before, did world first , eu first achievements raids wise..

    even tho the game has really good class system, its tab targeting crap...

    at the moment there are games out there with action combat.. they are far more fun and require skillz.. anybody can tab target somebody and spam 1 2 3.. 

     

    rift or any other tab targeting mmo is no more appealing to me..

    next gen mmos must be action combat like neverwinter/tera or hybrid action like gw2

     

    Are you serious about that?? It is much more harder to play with a lot of skills on your bar than with mindless 4 button spamming like in NW/Tera/GW2. If i want to play shooter i play shooter and not mmorpg

  • GameByNightGameByNight Hardware and Technology EditorMMORPG.COM Staff, Member RarePosts: 793
    Originally posted by Shadanwolf
    I made it to level 5 and deleted the game. I was looking for world class faction conflict...and its not there.the CONQUEST feature is just awful.
     

     

    Shenanigans. 1) PvP is a level 10 feature, 2) Conquest is a level 60 feature, 3) What game did you think you were playing? 

     

    I don't know a single person that has looked at RIFT for "world class faction conflict." Knocking the game for that would be like buying shampoo and being upset that it isn't mayonnaise.  

     

    That said, if you like instanced battlegrounds, I had a hell of a lot of fun playing my assassin in there.

     
  • bubalubabubaluba Member Posts: 434
    Originally posted by Shadanwolf
    I made it to level 5 and deleted the game. I was looking for world class faction conflict...and its not there.the CONQUEST feature is just awful.
     

    This is most ridiculous post i ever saw. lol you leveled to level 5 and you know everything....

  • GameByNightGameByNight Hardware and Technology EditorMMORPG.COM Staff, Member RarePosts: 793
    Originally posted by bubaluba
    Originally posted by psysention

    i played rift before, did world first , eu first achievements raids wise..

    even tho the game has really good class system, its tab targeting crap...

    at the moment there are games out there with action combat.. they are far more fun and require skillz.. anybody can tab target somebody and spam 1 2 3.. 

     

    rift or any other tab targeting mmo is no more appealing to me..

    next gen mmos must be action combat like neverwinter/tera or hybrid action like gw2

     

    Are you serious about that?? It is much more harder to play with a lot of skills on your bar than with mindless 4 button spamming like in NW/Tera/GW2. If i want to play shooter i play shooter and not mmorpg

     

     

    I tend to agree. Action combat can take a lot of skill if many different abilities are put into play but it's not like action bar combat is somehow flawed because you don't click to attack. Both systems have there merits. 

     

    And also, players who don't move in either style are probably bad. 

  • daltaniousdaltanious Member UncommonPosts: 2,381

    As already said, original Rift was fun, bugless since release, very good game. Had however one big problem ... that idea of theirs of rifts opening all over world and especially(!) near quest hubs ... made game unplayable at end. I remember could happen for entire week I have returned from job at evening ... in few hours I was unable to play anything because quest hubs where my alts were were invested all over with invasions, npc's got killed in secs and all players around too. I had enough of this and left.

    This problem was remedied somehow so at least quest hubs were not in middle of rifts or invasions .... but with expansion my enjoyment was ended after aprox 1 week. Had enough of "fun" to spend to kill REGULAR mobs lv. 50 MORE time that I would spend to kill ELITES lv. 50 in old world. Normal mobs hp aprox 26000/27000, ELITES in old world more then half of that. WTF?? And nobody else is bothered by that? Maybe somebody that have raided constantly does much more dps and hp .... but if expansion targeted radiers only ... welll another reason to quit.

    I'm logging back from time to time to check if something had changed ... but quit in instant I realize nothing changed. At this time not sure if will ever log back.

  • InFlamestwoInFlamestwo Member Posts: 662
    Originally posted by GameByNight
    Originally posted by bubaluba
    Originally posted by psysention

    i played rift before, did world first , eu first achievements raids wise..

    even tho the game has really good class system, its tab targeting crap...

    at the moment there are games out there with action combat.. they are far more fun and require skillz.. anybody can tab target somebody and spam 1 2 3.. 

     

    rift or any other tab targeting mmo is no more appealing to me..

    next gen mmos must be action combat like neverwinter/tera or hybrid action like gw2

     

    Are you serious about that?? It is much more harder to play with a lot of skills on your bar than with mindless 4 button spamming like in NW/Tera/GW2. If i want to play shooter i play shooter and not mmorpg

     

     

    I tend to agree. Action combat can take a lot of skill if many different abilities are put into play but it's not like action bar combat is somehow flawed because you don't click to attack. Both systems have there merits. 

     

    And also, players who don't move in either style are probably bad. 

    Action combat like in GW2, NW, Tera is more situational. While oldschool mmorpg combat is not as situational, it's more about what skills you spam in order to do the most damage and kill your enemy before he kills you, or if you're a healer how you can heal the most and tank tank the most. You see my point.

    image

  • mCalvertmCalvert Member CommonPosts: 1,283
    I just cant go back after playing GW2, for the sheer dullness of combat. Standing in place and mashing buttons till one of you dies is just boring.
  • dragnmastralexdragnmastralex Member UncommonPosts: 29

    there are 2 bad things about Rift that is annoying...

    First the massive amount of world events that happen, sure its great to have an event once and a while but like every 2 minutes some major event in every zone happens tossing thousands of raiding enemies all over the place and random rifts appearing all over the questing areas and teleport points making it hard to quest or travel without first taking 20 to 40 minutes to clear the event then hurry before another event starts.  IMHO it should have been set up so that lower level has less events like the 1-30 zones has one every hour and rifts that need to be opened by players not spawn open and the 31-60 rifts happen often.

     

    Second problem is the dungeon queues. Since all the shards (servers) are piled together you have every single dps in the game competing for a spot in a group which means it takes 45 minutes to 2 hours to enter a dungeon per run unless you form a group yourself before you enter which finding a healer is impossible because it only takes 10 seconds to 2 minutes for a healer to get in using the queue.  Shards should have been seperated for dungeon queues (you can't trade or do anything anyways) so that less dps is competing and it takes less time to enter.

     

     

    Other than those 2 things the game is perfect.

  • maple2maple2 Member UncommonPosts: 161
    Originally posted by psysention

    i played rift before, did world first , eu first achievements raids wise..

    even tho the game has really good class system, its tab targeting crap...

    at the moment there are games out there with action combat.. they are far more fun and require skillz.. anybody can tab target somebody and spam 1 2 3.. 

     

    rift or any other tab targeting mmo is no more appealing to me..

    next gen mmos must be action combat like neverwinter/tera or hybrid action like gw2

     

    u are wierd.. Other games might have a better combat system or a harder one but that is not the point of having these combat systems..

     

    Rift Combat system is just like wow and Wow did nice and so did rift, and it's not about tabbing like u say its about tactics on bosses and other things,

     

    if you dont like tabbing games why dont you quit gaming fully?

  • strangiato2112strangiato2112 Member CommonPosts: 1,538
    Originally posted by GameByNight

     

    Thanks for the comment! I have to disagree with you though and on nearly everything, so maybe we just have different tastes.

     

    While you're right that the RIFT community wasn't actively seeking three faction PvP (why would most players think of it when there were only two factions?), the larger MMO community has been vocally crying out for it since pre-WAR and even moreso with the build up to Guild Wars 2. They put it in to preempt GW2? I don't doubt that they did, but that doesn't make it bad. RIFT became one of the few MMOs to have three faction RvR and, after some time to work out the hitches, it turned out to be a lot of fun -- so long as you are into large scale, zerg-PvP (which happens in any objective based, high player count battleground). It would have been nice to see it take place in the open world, but short of significantly re-designing parts of the game it wasn't going to be pulled off well. Just look at Wintergrasp in WoW. 

     

    For housing, I disagree EQ2 is better but that may also be because their system gets so little press. How is it better? In RIFT, you're given a big space and extremely customizable tools. What's more, the most creative dimensions are downright astounding. Players can move, resize, tilt, etc any object to make it fit as a building block. You see people building floating ships with canon ports, castles, tree houses, enchanted gardens... the sky is the limit. Or your plat on hand. Either way, if that exists in EQ2 please point me towards it. I am willing to be convinced otherwise and would love to see more examples of player creativity at work. But the sheer depth of the builds being made in RIFT is easier to associate with Minecraft than typical "use this hook/size this painting" stuff we usually think of with MMOs.

     

    And finally, about the game not having a soul. I would have agreed only in terms of narrative delivery preceding Storm Legion. Vanilla quests are uninspired, no doubt about it. I feel that SL brought some much needed focus, however. There are simply fewer quests at each hub making it much easier to hold and follow the main story thread. That said, using Carnage Quests as a primary vehicle to replace the throwaway, unremarkable ones? Not a good idea. They feel grindy.

     

    To that point, I agree with previous posters about the 50-60 leveling experience. I don't think it's that players are "too soft" for long leveling curves (although many are), I think it's that the game spends 50 levels letting players level up quickly and then promptly throws the breaks on. Where before you would do -- throwing a number out there -- 50 quests to level up, Storm Legion ups it to 350. It feels like a wall. I get the sense that the developers didn't intend it that way because it significantly speeds up when you add in dungeons, hunt rifts, and zone events. They just did a terrible job of emphasizing that to players. Again, 1-50 set one precedent (you can ignore them with little penalty) and then switched to another with no notice (ignore other activities at your own peril). 

     

    The stories being told, however, are much better. They are deeper, more mature, and all around more interesting. 

     

    The problem with Conquest, is its not really 3 factions, its 3 teams.  It might as well just be Red vs Blue vs Yellow.  To be fair I'm not a huge fan of Server vs Server vs Server either.  DAoC had three real faction, so there was faction pride in that game.  The way Rift and GW2 do it, it is a gimmick.  DAoC it was part of the heart of the game world.  Too often Rift does things without any care for its game world.  Things such as removal of falling damage fit in here too.  Ive said that Rift is a good game for people who don't care about game world and immersion.  And while being able to leap off the tallest mountain without penalty may appeal to some, it just detaches me even further from the game world.

    For EQ2 housing, the best thing to do is log in (it has the f2p option) and check it out.  Pictures or videos don't do it justice.  There are some housing options that are mainly houses themselves, while there are others that are almost completely open.  Theres even a galleon house.  And the Guild Halls are *huge* and there are some very creative folks out there.

    Here is one example of what can be done completely from scratch

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G06zheGi3Ho

    Not the best example because its not a house, but thats using a lot of items from a holiday event, and this just highlights one of the reasons why EQ2 is ahead of Rift:  there is just so many more options.  And yes, this is partly due to the age of the game.  EQ2 has had 8 years to add stuff.

     

     

    The 'no soul' is much more than just the narrative delivery.  How about the racial choices?  You are creating a fantasy world from scratch and all you can come up with are two slightly different humans, 2 slightly different elves, dwarves, and the Bahmi.  And the races really are little more than graphical choices, because they just dont have developed personalities and traits.  Lets look at the Bahmi; http://rift.wikia.com/wiki/Bahmi.  that description is all over the place, the race has a serious identity crisis.  they are scientific, spiritual, great craftsmen, and powerful with great weapons?  

    Overall though, you are right, SL is a step forward form vanilla.  but its also a pretty big step back from EI, which is unquestionably (in my mind) Rift's peak.  And now its a zone with no place, because its for slightly geared level 50s, but people will go to SL for better and easier rewards.

     

     

  • Four0SixFour0Six Member UncommonPosts: 1,175
    Originally posted by Four0Six

    Rift is the "Best WoW ever" IMO.

    But I am thinking I might go give it another shot as F2P....

    Checked Rift out today, well their cash shop, and the subscriber upgrades. I'm out. To me, all I see is the same old F2P cash grab.

  • daethevendaetheven Member Posts: 51
    Originally posted by Shadanwolf
    I made it to level 5 and deleted the game. I was looking for world class faction conflict...and its not there.the CONQUEST feature is just awful.

    so you didnt even leave the starter zone and complain smh

     

     
  • daethevendaetheven Member Posts: 51
    Originally posted by Four0Six
    Originally posted by Four0Six

    Rift is the "Best WoW ever" IMO.

    But I am thinking I might go give it another shot as F2P....

    Checked Rift out today, well their cash shop, and the subscriber upgrades. I'm out. To me, all I see is the same old F2P cash grab.

     

    you looked at the store and saw a cash grab , please explain

     

  • Kingmob23Kingmob23 Member UncommonPosts: 78
    The game has a lot of interesting features, but I quit playing a few months after release because the environments felt very sterile and lifeless. The combat was also overly simplistic it was too easy to macro everything you needed combatwise into two buttons, with how the cool downs worked. However, since its been a couple of years and f2p, I'm thinking of checking it out again to see how they have improved the game.
  • shalissarshalissar Member UncommonPosts: 509
    Originally posted by Gorwe
    And that only proves my point:

    WAR should've been a PvE game. As it was designed. As the Asuryan willed it...

    (Not to mention that we need a good story focused Warhammer game-or PvE Warhammer game, both would suffice)

    Yeah I remember all those table-top games against AI. The PnP against AI as well. Totally scripted and predictable combat just screams Warhammer. Why couldn't we have that with the mmorpg?

    Ugh. Get out.

  • mCalvertmCalvert Member CommonPosts: 1,283
    Originally posted by dragnmastralex

    there are 2 bad things about Rift that is annoying...

    First the massive amount of world events that happen, sure its great to have an event once and a while but like every 2 minutes some major event in every zone happens tossing thousands of raiding enemies all over the place and random rifts appearing all over the questing areas and teleport points making it hard to quest or travel without first taking 20 to 40 minutes to clear the event then hurry before another event starts.  IMHO it should have been set up so that lower level has less events like the 1-30 zones has one every hour and rifts that need to be opened by players not spawn open and the 31-60 rifts happen often.

     

    Second problem is the dungeon queues. Since all the shards (servers) are piled together you have every single dps in the game competing for a spot in a group which means it takes 45 minutes to 2 hours to enter a dungeon per run unless you form a group yourself before you enter which finding a healer is impossible because it only takes 10 seconds to 2 minutes for a healer to get in using the queue.  Shards should have been seperated for dungeon queues (you can't trade or do anything anyways) so that less dps is competing and it takes less time to enter.

     

     

    Other than those 2 things the game is perfect.

    Dynamic quests were supposed to be one of the main features in Rift. I actually think it would be better if Rifts took over the whole game until people pushed them back. Instead you fight so many of them that they become routine and meaningless.

  • strangiato2112strangiato2112 Member CommonPosts: 1,538
    Originally posted by shalissar
    Originally posted by Gorwe
    And that only proves my point:

    WAR should've been a PvE game. As it was designed. As the Asuryan willed it...

    (Not to mention that we need a good story focused Warhammer game-or PvE Warhammer game, both would suffice)

    Yeah I remember all those table-top games against AI. The PnP against AI as well. Totally scripted and predictable combat just screams Warhammer. Why couldn't we have that with the mmorpg?

    Ugh. Get out.

    Warhammer has a *ton* of great lore and quite easily the best thing in WAR by an enormous margin is the Tome of Knowledge.  In fact its one of my top 5 MMORPG features of all time.  If they had just spent more time developing the PvE side of the game it could have been a great game.  The foundation was certainly there.

  • mCalvertmCalvert Member CommonPosts: 1,283
    Originally posted by Gorwe
    Thanks strangiato. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who sees the potential. Unfortunately, it seems that even GW lost themselves in Warhammer lol. And PvE is not vs AI. PvE is the same thing as Skyrim dam it! Now look me straight in the metaphorical eye and tell me that you wouldn't Skyrim like game set in the old world(Empire let's say). God dam these MMO players of today are really clueless-PvE is also not defined by dungeons before you say anything. Nor the raids.

    QED [x]

    Funny, I thought the best thing about Warhammer was the pvp zones. You could wander into it at level 1 and have a ton of fun. Meanwhile PVE was canned, standing in place mashing buttons doing kill 10 rats quests with the occasional dynamic quest. Maybe that's what you meant about PVE not being developed.

  • AroukosAroukos Member Posts: 571
    imo RIFT is  the best option in the current mmo market, considering both the game quality and its excellent f2p model
  • KeushpuppyKeushpuppy Member UncommonPosts: 171
    I just returned after not playing since 3rd month after retail. I am having a blast..Even got a friend to join who never has played it and she loves it also.
  • strangiato2112strangiato2112 Member CommonPosts: 1,538
    Originally posted by mCalvert
    Originally posted by Gorwe
    Thanks strangiato. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who sees the potential. Unfortunately, it seems that even GW lost themselves in Warhammer lol. And PvE is not vs AI. PvE is the same thing as Skyrim dam it! Now look me straight in the metaphorical eye and tell me that you wouldn't Skyrim like game set in the old world(Empire let's say). God dam these MMO players of today are really clueless-PvE is also not defined by dungeons before you say anything. Nor the raids.

    QED [x]

    Funny, I thought the best thing about Warhammer was the pvp zones. You could wander into it at level 1 and have a ton of fun. Meanwhile PVE was canned, standing in place mashing buttons doing kill 10 rats quests with the occasional dynamic quest. Maybe that's what you meant about PVE not being developed.

    It was doing things off the beaten path where WAR was good PvE wise.  the game world was good, and you were rewarded by poking your nose around with ToK unlocks which gave you more lore.  the public quests were actually really well done, about 100x times better than Rifts (which are pretty much uninspired garbage...95% of em are 5 waves of kill tasks with a single mob on wave 3 and 5...invasions are awesome though).

    If Rift's game world was half as interesting as WAR's this article wouldnt have to be called "Returning to Rift"-people wouldnt have left to begin with.

  • kaiser3282kaiser3282 Member UncommonPosts: 2,759
    Originally posted by strangiato2112
    Originally posted by mCalvert
    Originally posted by Gorwe
    Thanks strangiato. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who sees the potential. Unfortunately, it seems that even GW lost themselves in Warhammer lol. And PvE is not vs AI. PvE is the same thing as Skyrim dam it! Now look me straight in the metaphorical eye and tell me that you wouldn't Skyrim like game set in the old world(Empire let's say). God dam these MMO players of today are really clueless-PvE is also not defined by dungeons before you say anything. Nor the raids.

    QED [x]

    Funny, I thought the best thing about Warhammer was the pvp zones. You could wander into it at level 1 and have a ton of fun. Meanwhile PVE was canned, standing in place mashing buttons doing kill 10 rats quests with the occasional dynamic quest. Maybe that's what you meant about PVE not being developed.

    It was doing things off the beaten path where WAR was good PvE wise.  the game world was good, and you were rewarded by poking your nose around with ToK unlocks which gave you more lore.  the public quests were actually really well done, about 100x times better than Rifts (which are pretty much uninspired garbage...95% of em are 5 waves of kill tasks with a single mob on wave 3 and 5...invasions are awesome though).

    If Rift's game world was half as interesting as WAR's this article wouldnt have to be called "Returning to Rift"-people wouldnt have left to begin with.

    You say that as if 95% of the PQs in WAR arent kill X of this, now kill X of this slightly tougher mob, now kill this champion / hero. The other 5% was up of mind numbing item fetch crap.

    Oh man. At level 5 I was killing 30 of a random useless mob that I can kill in 5 seconds and does laughable damage to me. Now Im killing 150 of this useless mob and 150 of that other useless mob just to pass stage 1. OMG it's so much more exciting!..... Stage 3 - Oh cool I get to fight another hero that is just as easy to forget as the last 30 I killed only in a different skin and slightly higher numbers! 

    Then, to top it off, they are pretty much absolutely worthless to do and have been for a couple of years. PvP gear is way better than the PvE gear, and unless youre twinking out at specific levels (like 15 in T1) its not even worth your time doing a PQ.

    Sorry but while PQs were cool at the start, now that weve been there and done that not only in WAR but in several other games, there wasnt anything all that "good" about them in WAR. They were nothing more than a glorified repeatable kill / fetch quest that didn't even scale to the number of players in any way. A few of them were kind of interesting, mainly the LOTD stuff that had special mechanics, but certainly not the majority of them.

  • jbombardjbombard Member UncommonPosts: 598
    Been having a blast but it seems like since 2.3 the game is crashing a lot more frequently.
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