No, my point was to show you that your statement of lore being the only information out primarily for the game and that there was no real feature list was indeed incorrect.
Go to the game's web page right now. Look at the news section. Some background lore, watch trailers on your cell phone, some more background lore, and still more background lore. Nothing about the game part of the online game. Yawn. And you wonder why that doesn't excite people?
For that matter, go to the class section and click on a class at random. A very brief and vague description, plus some background lore. Out of a page of text, there will maybe be a sentence or so about game mechanics on average. For someone interested in knowing about the game part of the online game, there isn't much there. Compare that to the class reveals for Guild Wars 2, which are mostly about game mechanics. My claim here isn't that Guild Wars 2 will be better than Rift: Planes of Telara, but rather, ArenaNet is doing a very good job of hyping their game and Trion isn't.
If Trion has much interesting to talk about, they're doing a pretty good job of hiding it. Of course, one could say the same of Final Fantasy XIV, and Square-Enix actually did have some interesting things that they could have talked about, but mysteriously said little to nothing about them, at least on their web site. For that matter, when I dug through the web site for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes about two years after release, I thought that the game hadn't yet released for quite a while. Still, those are the exceptions, and if a company doesn't have much to say about a game on their web site, it's because there isn't much interesting to be said about the game at all.
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The soul system in this game sure looks to me like four classes with eight skill/talent trees each. Maybe they're more complex and versatile skill trees than you'd see in most games. But that's a difference of degree, not a difference of type.
The real point of my posts here isn't to say that the game will be horrible. There are certainly people who like the old MMORPG conventions and don't want something all that different from them. That's how the old conventions came to be in the first place. And maybe Trion can make a good profit by catering to people who want that. Blizzard sure has.
Rather, my point is to answer the original question of the thread: why isn't there more hype for this game? And the answer is that people who want what this game has to offer can, for the most part, already find something similar in many other games already on the market.
Those things being what they are it does not take away from the point that there is in fact a thread on the official forums containing the information you mentioned was not present. It not being presented in a format you want, which it has to be pointed out you hadn't really even went to the site before this conversation it seems and thus would have never even known it wasn't there, is a moot point in my view.
That said, there is one very, very key point that does speak directly to your concern of the information not being on their website. How many games do you know of that have listed such detailed information about the ALPHA BUILD of their upcoming MMO? I'd dare say a tiny few if any. I know it may be hard to keep site of this fact despite the countless good preview articles from writers from tons and tons of MMO gaming sites around the web about how smooth and polished it is, but the game is only in Alpha. Companies don't put the detailed feature information you cite on their forums because things can and do change.
I'd also contend that a difference in degree is significant. Trion is giving it's take on a more traditional system. Something they haven't been shy about stating.
With resepect to the original question of the thread, I believe it was questioning why the hype meter was tanking as hard as it was. The score will only go down if the game is scored low. To tank that fast would seem to indicate a mass influx of 0 votes. As far as your last comment in your last sentence, that can be said of GW2, SWTOR and any mid level to AAA game on the horizon. That doesn't make it a bad thing, though. Just is where an industry heavily driven by profit and not creativity eventually gets to. Lots and lots of homogeny.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Your not a troll by any means...I weigh that between your time here on the forums, post count and length/quality of the post. Its more of an art than a science.
But the whole time I was reading, it just seemed like your a guild wars 2 fan. And thats alright. Its definitely on my radar.
But dont delude yourself. Nothing they are doing in GuildWars2 is revolutionary. It looks really good at this point but until I hear a GW2 fan say something more than "ZOMG NO MORE HOLY TRINITY".....I remain skeptical.
Personally, I dont think breaking a system that has worked well, and removing a base class that many mmo fans have grown to love, is a good start to what many are calling the answer to our MMO dreams.
Guild Wars 1 already didn't have tanks or pure damage dealers. Removing healers is just removing the third part out of three of the "holy trinity". It's a big jump from your stereotypical WoW clone, but not such a big jump from Guild Wars 1--and a system that worked very well in Guild Wars 1.
But my point is more about what the companies are saying about the games than about what the games themselves are like. Suppose that most of ArenaNet's posts about the game were, here's the background lore to this zone, here's the background lore to that zone, here's what has happened to Ascalon and Kryta and Elona and so forth over the last 250 years, here's what the Charr have been up to in that time, here's the origin of the Sylvaria, etc. Maybe they'd still have revealed the same four classes, but talked mostly about lore, saying nothing more about warrior game mechanics than that they're heavily armored and can take a lot of damage, for example. Meanwhile, not a single character in the game code base is different from now. Think the game would still be so heavily hyped?
If that were ArenaNet's approach, then Guild Wars 2 surely wouldn't be the #1 hyped game on this site by such a large margin, and may not be #1 at all. That has been Trion's approach to hyping Rift: Planes of Telara, and that's why this isn't such a highly anticipated game. Some games resort to that simply because they don't have anything else to say, and some because their PR is incompetent. Some do that for a while and only crank up the hype machine closer to release--as Guild Wars 2 itself did up thorough late April. I don't recall if Guild Wars 2 was #1 in hype back then, but there wasn't a large gap between #1 and #2.
Lol why is wht guild wars doing with there u go to a town maybe u get there at time to actually pick up quest to save town. If u dont oh well u gotta wait. And rifts appearing all over the place randomly fomr diffrent type rifts and attack towns any diffrent concepts?
They both differ from the go here kill x number of mobs collect x number of items most mmos have.
Also there soul system is a cool take on the talent systems all games have. Weather a skill based one or a talent based system.
Maybe its me but i dont see the benifit of no dedicated healer class. I can see it now u get into a dungeon and people just dps and no one healz and u all wipe lol Thats gonna be great. Or all people decide to heal at once. its gonna be a mess.
I like the way the trinity works with defined roles getting rid of one of those defined roles may be ' revolutionary' but its a huge issue waiting to r ear its head. Like its not hard enough in all games with dungeons and raids trying to get everyone to do there job.
What happens when no ones job is healling? U get dps going why didnt u heal me only to be told uu should of healed yourself.
I didnt like the first gw so no matter how they change the waythey do quests im not that interestied in part 2. Im just saying i think the rifts idea is just as revolutionary as what ive read about gw 2 quest system. Seems to me both will work on a similar way.. diffrence is in rfit if u arent there when a rift shows up you are just as likely to run into a diffrent rift.
swtor to me is the game im most hyped about followed by tera. With there combat system. But then im such a huge star wars fan i get hyped by just being star wars. Almost everything ir ead about swtor is great. But as for hype is a meter votedon by players. So everyone has a diffrent version of what they feel is hype.
Maybe some people do vote down the games they think are competing with there game of choice but if they do its just petty. What does it matter in the end all that matters is how a game is recieved once it goes live and if it can survive long enough to get over the hickups most new mmos have. Sw tor has bioware/mythic behind them so odds are it will last a bit. Plus i like there story bassed mmo idea.
Well, that's your problem right there. You confine yourself to this generic MMO website for that information. If you go to the game's actual website and visit it's forums you'll find, just like on any MMO official fourms, a forum post containing all of the features in the game that have been talked about along with the appropriate links/citations from where a developer talked about it. Heck, I even posted a link directly to said thread in the sticky at the top of this forum.
I can't, however, make everyone read through that sticky. I and others who have can only show those who make incorrect statements where to look to find accurate information.
So I followed the link to the feature list. And what exactly does Rift have that, say, WoW doesn't? Based on that thread, I'd say it's about what I said before: the dynamic rifts plus somewhat more versatile classes. A generic WoW clone plus a couple minor tweaks isn't something to get terribly excited about. And I don't even like WoW.
Okay, so there are a few other things:
"Some of the combat mechanics include reactionary skills, positionals and chain attacks."
"You can soul walk once an hour..."
"No armor damage or repairs."
"NPC's may have goals and may react to the world."
But those are all minor things. The only things that I see on there that this game has but one wouldn't expect of a generic WoW clone is the dynamic rifts. And that doesn't strike me as enough to build a whole game around. Sure, there are people who want a WoW clone--and they're already playing WoW.
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I didn't previously know that you're restricted to souls within your own calling. That actually makes the class system vastly less versatile than I thought, as I previously expected it to allow for hybrid characters.
You spoke also of champion online and its system. And it sounds like those FFA games, where anyone can be anything.
Im tired and its late so I am going to be blunt. Those systems SUCK. Everyone turns into the same OP build where no one is really different. Its a versatility mirage. --I know you have prolly heard this argument before...so I wont go any further.
In regards to RIFT, do you really think its not versatile to have the jump from a support role of chants/debuffs/heals, to a ranged pet class to a melee dps class?
With resepect to the original question of the thread, I believe it was questioning why the hype meter was tanking as hard as it was. The score will only go down if the game is scored low. To tank that fast would seem to indicate a mass influx of 0 votes. As far as your last comment in your last sentence, that can be said of GW2, SWTOR and any mid level to AAA game on the horizon. That doesn't make it a bad thing, though. Just is where an industry heavily driven by profit and not creativity eventually gets to. Lots and lots of homogeny.
First of all, it's not true that a game's hype score only drops when people vote it down. I explained that in my first post on this thread.
Second, you can't vote a game 0. The lowest you can give a game is 1.
Third, SWTOR is promoting their game in exactly the same manner as Telara that I'm describing here. They can point to companions and more complex storylines as their innovations, but it's mostly drowned out by massive amounts of lore. The reasons why SWTOR's hype has been dropping are the same as for Rift: Planes of Telara.
Guild Wars 2 most notably isn't doing that, as they're actually not talking about the background lore that much. They're mostly talking about game mechanics.
As for Guild Wars 2 not being that different, fine. Suppose I want an AAA MMORPG with no dedicated healers. How many are there? You can find some, but they tend to be oddball games that are very little like the rest of the genre. That's a radical change to game mechanics, and the entire game has to be designed from the ground up around it. If you try to patch it into a more traditional MMORPG, you'll destroy the game. Maybe it will be great. Maybe it will be horrible. But it will surely be different.
Okay then, what if I hate doing traditional quests and want everything to be dynamic events instead, with informal grouping with everyone else who happens to be in the area without having to officially set up groups? How many games have that? I count zero. That's going to be a huge change from the traditional, go around looking for exclamation marks over NPCs heads that people have come to expect. I actually think it won't work very well: ArenaNet will deliver what they promised, but it won't be what players expect, and will be rife with too low levels wanting free powerleveling and too high levels making things trivial. But it's surely going to be very different, and a much bigger departure from industry norms than the rifts of Rift: Planes of Telara, which could be thought of as a far milder version of a similar concept.
Im tired and its late so I am going to be blunt. Those systems SUCK. Everyone turns into the same OP build where no one is really different. Its a versatility mirage. --I know you have prolly heard this argument before...so I wont go any further.
Actually, Champions Online has a different take: make PvE easy enough that you can take whatever you want and still win.
Now, maybe you don't like that system. I don't like it when games go too far with versatility, either, and absolutely loathed the secondary classes in Guild Wars. But it's a lot more versatility it appears this game will have. What I was disagreeing with was your original claim of: "I haven't seen any other game that has given quite as much options when it comes to building a class."
Though I guarantee you that this game will have the same problem you described of flavor of the month builds. It will simply be to a lesser degree, because of less versatility.
Im tired and its late so I am going to be blunt. Those systems SUCK. Everyone turns into the same OP build where no one is really different. Its a versatility mirage. --I know you have prolly heard this argument before...so I wont go any further.
Actually, Champions Online has a different take: make PvE easy enough that you can take whatever you want and still win.
Now, maybe you don't like that system. I don't like it when games go too far with versatility, either, and absolutely loathed the secondary classes in Guild Wars. But it's a lot more versatility it appears this game will have. What I was disagreeing with was your original claim of: "I haven't seen any other game that has given quite as much options when it comes to building a class."
Though I guarantee you that this game will have the same problem you described of flavor of the month builds. It will simply be to a lesser degree, because of less versatility.
Well, I have enjoyed the discussion. And I have to take back my comment about features in GW2....since I read a post where you listed features above and beyond the "Holy Trinity" changes.
GW2 is now solidly in my #2 position of upcoming MMOs.
You spoke also of champion online and its system. And it sounds like those FFA games, where anyone can be anything.
Im tired and its late so I am going to be blunt. Those systems SUCK. Everyone turns into the same OP build where no one is really different. Its a versatility mirage. --I know you have prolly heard this argument before...so I wont go any further.
In regards to RIFT, do you really think its not versatile to have the jump from a support role of chants/debuffs/heals, to a ranged pet class to a melee dps class?
In GW2, it doesn't seem to be anything like an FFA. You can spec twoards a certain build type, yes, but its more about how you do things and the fact that every profession has its own unique mechanic to set it apart from the others. You will also never have a pure support/damage/control build because of the way the skill system works. And your self healing skill is ALWAYS more powerful than a heal from allies. The heals from others are usually suplimentary, at best.
A few examples. The elementalist's unique mechanic is attunement. It changes the weapon skills (1-5) at the click of a button to a different style. Each element has a different style and changes the way the elementalist plays at a moments notice in combat. Water has a lot of cc in the form of snares and the intrinsic benefit of minor healing. Fire has a lot of DoT and damageing attacks, Air has cc in the form of blinding and burst damage viability, earth is more defensive and can control oponents by knocking them down and I think may buff defense.
Now, compare that to the Necromancer. The necro has a Death Shrowd mechanic that switches out the necro's skill bar for 4 powerful skills and health bar for a lifeforce bar that goes down automatically and when attacked. It is charged by certain skills in and out of death shrowd as well as killing foes. This combines with the unique skill types avaliable to the necromancer, aoe effects that provide constant buffs and debuffs, create an entirely different style of play and feel from the elementalist.
So, in GW2, its not always what you do, but how you do it. Every profession can fulfill any role, but they all do it differently. Some will be better at a role, probably, but not in every situation. I'm sure there are times I would rather have ranger spirits instead of a necromancer mark/well. A ranger with a sword will never play like a warrior with a sword.
I really need to make a comprehensive post/article somewhere that details the skill/combat system in depth. I suppose the articles on GW2.com and the ArenaNet blog do this, but if you don't put it all together it just doesn't have the same impact.
You spoke also of champion online and its system. And it sounds like those FFA games, where anyone can be anything.
Im tired and its late so I am going to be blunt. Those systems SUCK. Everyone turns into the same OP build where no one is really different. Its a versatility mirage. --I know you have prolly heard this argument before...so I wont go any further.
In regards to RIFT, do you really think its not versatile to have the jump from a support role of chants/debuffs/heals, to a ranged pet class to a melee dps class?
In GW2, it doesn't seem to be anything like an FFA. You can spec twoards a certain build type, yes, but its more about how you do things and the fact that every profession has its own unique mechanic to set it apart from the others. You will also never have a pure support/damage/control build because of the way the skill system works. And your self healing skill is ALWAYS more powerful than a heal from allies. The heals from others are usually suplimentary, at best.
A few examples. The elementalist's unique mechanic is attunement. It changes the weapon skills (1-5) at the click of a button to a different style. Each element has a different style and changes the way the elementalist plays at a moments notice in combat. Water has a lot of cc in the form of snares and the intrinsic benefit of minor healing. Fire has a lot of DoT and damageing attacks, Air has cc in the form of blinding and burst damage viability, earth is more defensive and can control oponents by knocking them down and I think may buff defense.
Now, compare that to the Necromancer. The necro has a Death Shrowd mechanic that switches out the necro's skill bar for 4 powerful skills and health bar for a lifeforce bar that goes down automatically and when attacked. It is charged by certain skills in and out of death shrowd as well as killing foes. This combines with the unique skill types avaliable to the necromancer, aoe effects that provide constant buffs and debuffs, create an entirely different style of play and feel from the elementalist.
So, in GW2, its not always what you do, but how you do it. Every profession can fulfill any role, but they all do it differently. Some will be better at a role, probably, but not in every situation. I'm sure there are times I would rather have ranger spirits instead of a necromancer mark/well. A ranger with a sword will never play like a warrior with a sword.
I really need to make a comprehensive post/article somewhere that details the skill/combat system in depth. I suppose the articles on GW2.com and the ArenaNet blog do this, but if you don't put it all together it just doesn't have the same impact.
Enjoyed your post but just so were clear, my comments about versatility were not directly pointed at GW2. I was defending RIFTs class system because I do think its very versatile.
I have not played MMOs as long as some people (Shadowbane was my first) but the system you described, well, that for once seems new.
As I understand it, depending on the class they can switch into another form? And you can do this midfight?
The closest thing that reminds me of, and dont be offended is a class in WoW called the Druid.
A druid in the course of one 1v1 fight could, open from stealth (cat form) , turn into a bear (a tank form) and charge you, run away in a travel form, switch to caster form, heal, and cast from range. Now...depending on how the druid specs, really determines which of those things he does very well. And switching between forms allows the druid different abilities in those forms.
You could go feral which focuses more on the melle in cat and bear forms.
Balance is the direct dmg caster.
Restoration focuses on healing.
For me to understand, thats what it sort of reminds me of.
For good gameplay, I don't think it's purely more versatility versus less. Rather, I think that the question is what sort of variety it entails. Given a particular challenge, different classes ought to be able to meet that challenge, but need to meet the challenge in different ways. Thus, playing thorough a quest or mission on one character, and then doing the same on a different character of a different class can give a fairly different experience. This is tricky to do without making one class clearly stronger than another. Still, when done properly, the variety across classes adds a lot of replay value.
The other sort of versatility that I like is for a given class to be forced to employ very different tactics in order to meet different challenges. When a game degenerates into, use skill 1, then skill 2, then skill 3 for maximum damage--and do that against every single mob you meet in the entire game, that's boring. It's far more interesting if you have to use different skills against different mobs, or better yet, different combinations of skills. That means that there's variety across content within a class, so that different areas of the game can have a very different feel. That's far better than if fighting mobs in one zone feels exactly like fighting mobs in a different zone, with only different graphics.
That's also tricky to do--and nearly impossible to do with the "holy trinity" setup. A designated tank has to always grab mobs and get them to focus fire on him. A designated healer has to always watch life bars and heal. You can try to put a little bit of variety into this, but I've never seen a game succeed in squeezing that much variety into healing. Saying you can switch from a tank to a healer and back is merely trying to take the variety across characters style and squish it into a single character, which doesn't add to the variety of gameplay available.
I think the best example of the second kind of versatility that I've seen is the mesmer class in Guild Wars. In some areas of the game, mobs cast some really nasty hexes, so it's critical that you bring hex removal skills to clear them. In others, mobs won't use hexes at all, or will only use hexes that are easily ignored, such as mild health degeneration. There, you don't want to bring hex removal, as you need the skillbar slots for other things. Even if you're going to bring hex removal, do you bring one skill, two, or three? Normal skills only, or use up your elite slot? But mesmers aren't just for hex removal; they also do enchantment removal, energy denial, apply various hexes, disable mob skills, and interrupt skills. And that's all quite apart from damage, which you also want to do. And even if you know that you want to bring three interrupts, which three? They have different cooldowns, different energy usage, different other effects (some damage, disable the skill, gain energy yourself, etc.), and can interrupt different types of enemy skills, so they're not interchangeable. You get eight skillbar slots, so two of these and three of those means you run out very quickly, and you have to choose carefully. This forces a mesmer to use wildly different playing styles from one zone to another in order to be useful, and to constantly change around his build to bring skills that are important and not ones that are useless.
In contrast, a healing monk, even in the same game, has nearly the same task everywhere: watch lifebars and heal whoever is taking damage. Sure, there are both direct heals and protection skills to prevent damage, instant heals and heals over time, individual heals and group heals, and so forth. Monks have something like 50 or 70 healing skills in Guild Wars (mainly healing and protection attributes). But you can pick one build and use it basically everywhere, which isn't much variety. Maybe you swap out one or two skills for hex removal or condition removal, or for heavier group healing, but going from one zone to another doesn't change what a monk does very much. That's not very much variety, which is why most players find it boring--and why it's hard to find enough healers for a group in most games that require player healers.
With resepect to the original question of the thread, I believe it was questioning why the hype meter was tanking as hard as it was. The score will only go down if the game is scored low. To tank that fast would seem to indicate a mass influx of 0 votes. As far as your last comment in your last sentence, that can be said of GW2, SWTOR and any mid level to AAA game on the horizon. That doesn't make it a bad thing, though. Just is where an industry heavily driven by profit and not creativity eventually gets to. Lots and lots of homogeny.
First of all, it's not true that a game's hype score only drops when people vote it down. I explained that in my first post on this thread.
Second, you can't vote a game 0. The lowest you can give a game is 1.
Third, SWTOR is promoting their game in exactly the same manner as Telara that I'm describing here. They can point to companions and more complex storylines as their innovations, but it's mostly drowned out by massive amounts of lore. The reasons why SWTOR's hype has been dropping are the same as for Rift: Planes of Telara.
Guild Wars 2 most notably isn't doing that, as they're actually not talking about the background lore that much. They're mostly talking about game mechanics.
As for Guild Wars 2 not being that different, fine. Suppose I want an AAA MMORPG with no dedicated healers. How many are there? You can find some, but they tend to be oddball games that are very little like the rest of the genre. That's a radical change to game mechanics, and the entire game has to be designed from the ground up around it. If you try to patch it into a more traditional MMORPG, you'll destroy the game. Maybe it will be great. Maybe it will be horrible. But it will surely be different.
Okay then, what if I hate doing traditional quests and want everything to be dynamic events instead, with informal grouping with everyone else who happens to be in the area without having to officially set up groups? How many games have that? I count zero. That's going to be a huge change from the traditional, go around looking for exclamation marks over NPCs heads that people have come to expect. I actually think it won't work very well: ArenaNet will deliver what they promised, but it won't be what players expect, and will be rife with too low levels wanting free powerleveling and too high levels making things trivial. But it's surely going to be very different, and a much bigger departure from industry norms than the rifts of Rift: Planes of Telara, which could be thought of as a far milder version of a similar concept.
I didn't say it only drops when it is low scored. I said that it was dropping very rapidly in a short period, which hints at a large influx of low scoring. There is a difference there.
As for not being able to vote 0, like I said before I hadn't used the hype meter since Age of Conan so I'll amend my statement to an influx of 1 voting.
As for being different, show me a game where I can be a warrior wielding Sword and Shield, have a melee pet, do AOE damage and hand out significant combat buffs to my party. Or what if I want want to be a Rogue that teleports in, strikes my opponent with poisoned daggers, hit them with some elemental magical damage, teleport out, then stealth away. Or a Rogue that teleports in, plants an AOE bomb/explosive in the middle of a group, teleports out, then opens up at range with my bow and sending in my pet to mop up.
I mean, we can play this back and forth game drawing examples from what each game offers that the other doesn't and trying to make the other seem lacking, dull or "the norm" all day. It's pointless exercise to say the least. I mean like the dynamic grouping question you posed, if you only did the rift content in Rifts, of which there 6 different flavors of rift (the 6 Planes) and there are different kinds of Rifts (some more dangerous than others) then your count goes to 1. People don't have to be in a hard defined group in order to work together and share the benefits of a rift content event.
I'm not trying to (which should be very evident) discredit GW2. As I said before I haven't really looked at it more than 10 or 12 times. I know that I am not really interested in playing it, especially if it is as cutscene heavy as a gameplay video I watched for an archer a few days ago. That, and the controller scheme, was a large part of why I didn't buy into FFXIV and is only a small part of why I won't be purchasing SWTOR.
That said, I hope GW2 does well. I have no interest in it, but I'm not going and hyping it at a 1. Then again, the hype score doesn't really matter to me. I like to do my own research for titles that interest me and make my own educated decision. It is pretty accurate to say that the majority of scorers for hype meters aren't educated and have hardly made a decision, lol.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
GW2 fanboys is what happenned to the hype of this and every other game.
and I am ashamed to be a GW2 fan
I can't tell you how mind numbingly stupid it is to criticize people for being excited about one game over another.
its not blaming someone for being excited, its blaming them for purposely lowballing EVERY OTHER GAME and chances are alot of them know nothing about the other games.
IMO rank GW2 all 10's. I dont care.
its seeing every other game drop .75 a point or more thats irritating.
let your game stand on its own merits, no need to badmouth everyone else IMO
Very true.
but, alas, thats what happens here on this site, and thats why no one except newbies and idiots put any value on the MMORPG.com hype score.
As for being different, show me a game where I can be a warrior wielding Sword and Shield, have a melee pet, do AOE damage and hand out significant combat buffs to my party.
You can do that in Guild Wars 1, as has been out for five years, and you can do that today. You'd need to take a ranger secondary for the pet, though. It's actually not far from how I often play my warrrior, with whirlwind attack and hundred blades for the AoE damage, a pet to eat some enemy blows and get in the way, and watch yourself for a group buff.
I've conceded that the rifts here are a significant departure from the industry norm. Will six types of rifts with varying difficulties for each really be enough to carry a game, though? For comparison, Guild Wars 2 has about 1500 custom scripted dynamic events. That sure sounds to me like taking the same basic concept a whole lot further.
I doubt that Guild Wars 2 will really be all that cutscene heavy. It will have cutscenes to explain the storyline, but it won't be like you're getting interrupted by one every ten minutes. Guild Wars 1 had a cutscene at the end of each mission, and sometimes at the start or in the middle, and only a few other places in the game. (There are a total of 69 missions in the game, spread across three campaigns and an expansion.) You could skip any cutscene if you wanted to, though.
As for being different, show me a game where I can be a warrior wielding Sword and Shield, have a melee pet, do AOE damage and hand out significant combat buffs to my party.
You can do that in Guild Wars 1, as has been out for five years, and you can do that today. You'd need to take a ranger secondary for the pet, though. It's actually not far from how I often play my warrrior, with whirlwind attack and hundred blades for the AoE damage, a pet to eat some enemy blows and get in the way, and watch yourself for a group buff.
I've conceded that the rifts here are a significant departure from the industry norm. Will six types of rifts with varying difficulties for each really be enough to carry a game, though? For comparison, Guild Wars 2 has about 1500 custom scripted dynamic events. That sure sounds to me like taking the same basic concept a whole lot further.
I doubt that Guild Wars 2 will really be all that cutscene heavy. It will have cutscenes to explain the storyline, but it won't be like you're getting interrupted by one every ten minutes. Guild Wars 1 had a cutscene at the end of each mission, and sometimes at the start or in the middle, and only a few other places in the game. (There are a total of 69 missions in the game, spread across three campaigns and an expansion.) You could skip any cutscene if you wanted to, though.
To your earlier question about having a game with no dedicated healers, Asheron's Call did this some 13 years ago with their system. I'd dare not say that AC was not one of the major games of this industry either.
I've never thought that the rift content would carry the game. It does make up a significant chunk of the game and when added in amongst all the game's other features sounds like some fun gameplay to me. One does have to ask within those 1500 events how many of them are basically the same thing (kill, fetch, gather, defend, attack) events but with different names on the npcs. Course that is a question fair to any game with respect to content.
I can understand why they would have cutscenes, but I'm not a believer in them in relation to MMOs. They are fine in SP RPGs but I'm more from the line of the players make their character's story, not have it told to them from the devs through cutscenes. Different tastes for different people, I know.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
I've conceded that the rifts here are a significant departure from the industry norm. Will six types of rifts with varying difficulties for each really be enough to carry a game, though? For comparison, Guild Wars 2 has about 1500 custom scripted dynamic events. That sure sounds to me like taking the same basic concept a whole lot further.
I wondered how the hell scripted content can be dynamic, so I read up on GW2 and can only concluded that dynamic content in GW2 is a completely different concept from the dynamic content in Rift. GW2 took the scripted content a whole lot farther so that it resembles dynamic content. Rift dynamic content contains scripted events, but in contrast to GW2 it is truely dynamic and afaik not replacing questing or taking questing further as GW2 claims it does. They are not to be compared by saying GW2 has 1500 scripted dynamic events and Rift has only rifts opening from 6 different planes. The concepts just differ too much. They only share the name.
I wondered how the hell scripted content can be dynamic, so I read up on GW2 and can only concluded that dynamic content in GW2 is a completely different concept from the dynamic content in Rift. GW2 took the scripted content a whole lot farther so that it resembles dynamic content. Rift dynamic content contains scripted events, but in contrast to GW2 it is truely dynamic and afaik not replacing questing or taking questing further as GW2 claims it does. They are not to be compared by saying GW2 has 1500 scripted dynamic events and Rift has only rifts opening from 6 different planes. The concepts just differ too much. They only share the name.
Well then, tell me if I've misunderstood the concept of rifts. As I understand it, it's six different types of rifts that the game engine can drop in a random spot at random times. Mobs come pouring out and the particular mobs depend on the rift. How many come scales with how many players are in the area. I'd expect it to also scale with the level of the players or the level of the area or some such. Mobs that come pouring out can expand and take over areas and cause general mayhem, or players can slaughter them and close the rift.
Compare that with dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. Mobs attack in one area in an event, and players either fight off the mobs or don't. If they don't, then the mobs destroy the area and move on to another in a new event. If players defeat the mobs, then that pushes them back and also starts another event--but a different one from if the players lose. Mobs scale with the number of players in the area. Players in the area share loot even if not formally grouped. But, here's the key: it's not just one event that can be dropped in a random spot on the map. Different regions have their own different events with their own stories, which is where the 1500+ number comes from.
"To your earlier question about having a game with no dedicated healers, Asheron's Call did this some 13 years ago with their system."
Interesting. That goes back to the era before I played MMORPGs, as I had the impression (mostly correct in retrospect) that they were too grindy. Some were trying way too hard to use 3D graphics that looked terrible, too.
"They are fine in SP RPGs but I'm more from the line of the players make their character's story, not have it told to them from the devs through cutscenes."
That usually degenerates into the game not having a storyline at all, whether globally or for individual players, but only some scattered fragments of lore that don't amount to anything coherent. I'd agree with your next sentence after the one I quoted, though.
I wondered how the hell scripted content can be dynamic, so I read up on GW2 and can only concluded that dynamic content in GW2 is a completely different concept from the dynamic content in Rift. GW2 took the scripted content a whole lot farther so that it resembles dynamic content. Rift dynamic content contains scripted events, but in contrast to GW2 it is truely dynamic and afaik not replacing questing or taking questing further as GW2 claims it does. They are not to be compared by saying GW2 has 1500 scripted dynamic events and Rift has only rifts opening from 6 different planes. The concepts just differ too much. They only share the name.
Well then, tell me if I've misunderstood the concept of rifts.
Hey, I did not say you misunderstood the concept of rifts, I said the concept of dynamic content in both games are not the same. You might be right that GW2 took it further, but to me their explanation of what dynamic content is does not sound like dynamic content at all, just heavily scripted content, which might be a lot of fun, and their claim that it makes quest content way better is probably justified. And that is all that matters in the end, whatever you call it. (It might be, of course, that your understanding of the GW2 dynamic content is better than their explanation of it.)
What is known about rifts and how they are scripted is only known to a small extend. Maybe they top that number of 1500, I doubt it, but that is not what really matters. Will it be fun? Probably. Just like GW2 probably will be fun, but in a different way.
However, from the trend I've seen going on, I'd say that people are voting down every game except GW2.
Although I'm not a conspiracy dude by any measure, people creating duplicate accounts could be an explanation.
SW:TOR has more votes however, so it is slightly more resistant to this effect.
I would like to point out that it takes only a small portion of people to cause these effects. It is not fair to point to the whole following of GW2.
It should also be pointed out that the hype-meter only has one purpose: to attract new subscribers to mmorpg.com. That is why they keep it. But that was clear to most of us already. Mmorpg.com is evil.
I've been following GW2 for a long time now and I can be considered a fan, but hey I dont go hyping down games unless they deserve it. (I de-hyped SW:TOR after viewing a gameplay the animations killed my interest)
But I know very little about Rift (other than the Rifts) to de-hype it.
"It has potential" -Second most used phrase on existence "It sucks" -Most used phrase on existence
It should also be pointed out that the hype-meter only has one purpose: to attract new subscribers to mmorpg.com. That is why they keep it. But that was clear to most of us already. Mmorpg.com is evil.
That's the only purpose? My, my, such cynicism. It's also there to give us something to argue about, in threads like this.
But yeah, Internet polls are overrated. They don't even restrict to likely voters.
I wondered how the hell scripted content can be dynamic, so I read up on GW2 and can only concluded that dynamic content in GW2 is a completely different concept from the dynamic content in Rift. GW2 took the scripted content a whole lot farther so that it resembles dynamic content. Rift dynamic content contains scripted events, but in contrast to GW2 it is truely dynamic and afaik not replacing questing or taking questing further as GW2 claims it does. They are not to be compared by saying GW2 has 1500 scripted dynamic events and Rift has only rifts opening from 6 different planes. The concepts just differ too much. They only share the name.
Well then, tell me if I've misunderstood the concept of rifts. As I understand it, it's six different types of rifts that the game engine can drop in a random spot at random times. Mobs come pouring out and the particular mobs depend on the rift. How many come scales with how many players are in the area. I'd expect it to also scale with the level of the players or the level of the area or some such. Mobs that come pouring out can expand and take over areas and cause general mayhem, or players can slaughter them and close the rift.
Compare that with dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. Mobs attack in one area in an event, and players either fight off the mobs or don't. If they don't, then the mobs destroy the area and move on to another in a new event. If players defeat the mobs, then that pushes them back and also starts another event--but a different one from if the players lose. Mobs scale with the number of players in the area. Players in the area share loot even if not formally grouped. But, here's the key: it's not just one event that can be dropped in a random spot on the map. Different regions have their own different events with their own stories, which is where the 1500+ number comes from.
"To your earlier question about having a game with no dedicated healers, Asheron's Call did this some 13 years ago with their system."
Interesting. That goes back to the era before I played MMORPGs, as I had the impression (mostly correct in retrospect) that they were too grindy. Some were trying way too hard to use 3D graphics that looked terrible, too.
"They are fine in SP RPGs but I'm more from the line of the players make their character's story, not have it told to them from the devs through cutscenes."
That usually degenerates into the game not having a storyline at all, whether globally or for individual players, but only some scattered fragments of lore that don't amount to anything coherent. I'd agree with your next sentence after the one I quoted, though.
I've noticed you used this as a plus for GW2 a few times but not for Rift. Players involved in a rift event do also share loot even though they aren't formally grouped as well.
Additionally, the rift mobs don't just hang around the rift event area. They can travel to other areas and destroy them too.
"A specific rift event only grows to a certain size (this may vary depending on how they play in testing) but in addition to that planar incursions can go beyond a rift event and actually travel over the lands and destroy other areas as well as other rift types."
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
It should also be pointed out that the hype-meter only has one purpose: to attract new subscribers to mmorpg.com. That is why they keep it. But that was clear to most of us already. Mmorpg.com is evil.
That's the only purpose?
Of course. No need to be cynical about it. Or naive.
Rift has 647 votes while TOR has 3400 something votes.
So what is going on here ? The more people that start to vote for rift the lower the hype rating will be. It is just evening itself out. BTW the hype rating on this site is a joke and not to be taken seriously, tbh.
Comments
Those things being what they are it does not take away from the point that there is in fact a thread on the official forums containing the information you mentioned was not present. It not being presented in a format you want, which it has to be pointed out you hadn't really even went to the site before this conversation it seems and thus would have never even known it wasn't there, is a moot point in my view.
That said, there is one very, very key point that does speak directly to your concern of the information not being on their website. How many games do you know of that have listed such detailed information about the ALPHA BUILD of their upcoming MMO? I'd dare say a tiny few if any. I know it may be hard to keep site of this fact despite the countless good preview articles from writers from tons and tons of MMO gaming sites around the web about how smooth and polished it is, but the game is only in Alpha. Companies don't put the detailed feature information you cite on their forums because things can and do change.
I'd also contend that a difference in degree is significant. Trion is giving it's take on a more traditional system. Something they haven't been shy about stating.
With resepect to the original question of the thread, I believe it was questioning why the hype meter was tanking as hard as it was. The score will only go down if the game is scored low. To tank that fast would seem to indicate a mass influx of 0 votes. As far as your last comment in your last sentence, that can be said of GW2, SWTOR and any mid level to AAA game on the horizon. That doesn't make it a bad thing, though. Just is where an industry heavily driven by profit and not creativity eventually gets to. Lots and lots of homogeny.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Guild Wars 1 already didn't have tanks or pure damage dealers. Removing healers is just removing the third part out of three of the "holy trinity". It's a big jump from your stereotypical WoW clone, but not such a big jump from Guild Wars 1--and a system that worked very well in Guild Wars 1.
But my point is more about what the companies are saying about the games than about what the games themselves are like. Suppose that most of ArenaNet's posts about the game were, here's the background lore to this zone, here's the background lore to that zone, here's what has happened to Ascalon and Kryta and Elona and so forth over the last 250 years, here's what the Charr have been up to in that time, here's the origin of the Sylvaria, etc. Maybe they'd still have revealed the same four classes, but talked mostly about lore, saying nothing more about warrior game mechanics than that they're heavily armored and can take a lot of damage, for example. Meanwhile, not a single character in the game code base is different from now. Think the game would still be so heavily hyped?
If that were ArenaNet's approach, then Guild Wars 2 surely wouldn't be the #1 hyped game on this site by such a large margin, and may not be #1 at all. That has been Trion's approach to hyping Rift: Planes of Telara, and that's why this isn't such a highly anticipated game. Some games resort to that simply because they don't have anything else to say, and some because their PR is incompetent. Some do that for a while and only crank up the hype machine closer to release--as Guild Wars 2 itself did up thorough late April. I don't recall if Guild Wars 2 was #1 in hype back then, but there wasn't a large gap between #1 and #2.
Lol why is wht guild wars doing with there u go to a town maybe u get there at time to actually pick up quest to save town. If u dont oh well u gotta wait. And rifts appearing all over the place randomly fomr diffrent type rifts and attack towns any diffrent concepts?
They both differ from the go here kill x number of mobs collect x number of items most mmos have.
Also there soul system is a cool take on the talent systems all games have. Weather a skill based one or a talent based system.
Maybe its me but i dont see the benifit of no dedicated healer class. I can see it now u get into a dungeon and people just dps and no one healz and u all wipe lol Thats gonna be great. Or all people decide to heal at once. its gonna be a mess.
I like the way the trinity works with defined roles getting rid of one of those defined roles may be ' revolutionary' but its a huge issue waiting to r ear its head. Like its not hard enough in all games with dungeons and raids trying to get everyone to do there job.
What happens when no ones job is healling? U get dps going why didnt u heal me only to be told uu should of healed yourself.
I didnt like the first gw so no matter how they change the waythey do quests im not that interestied in part 2. Im just saying i think the rifts idea is just as revolutionary as what ive read about gw 2 quest system. Seems to me both will work on a similar way.. diffrence is in rfit if u arent there when a rift shows up you are just as likely to run into a diffrent rift.
swtor to me is the game im most hyped about followed by tera. With there combat system. But then im such a huge star wars fan i get hyped by just being star wars. Almost everything ir ead about swtor is great. But as for hype is a meter votedon by players. So everyone has a diffrent version of what they feel is hype.
Maybe some people do vote down the games they think are competing with there game of choice but if they do its just petty. What does it matter in the end all that matters is how a game is recieved once it goes live and if it can survive long enough to get over the hickups most new mmos have. Sw tor has bioware/mythic behind them so odds are it will last a bit. Plus i like there story bassed mmo idea.
You spoke also of champion online and its system. And it sounds like those FFA games, where anyone can be anything.
Im tired and its late so I am going to be blunt. Those systems SUCK. Everyone turns into the same OP build where no one is really different. Its a versatility mirage. --I know you have prolly heard this argument before...so I wont go any further.
In regards to RIFT, do you really think its not versatile to have the jump from a support role of chants/debuffs/heals, to a ranged pet class to a melee dps class?
First of all, it's not true that a game's hype score only drops when people vote it down. I explained that in my first post on this thread.
Second, you can't vote a game 0. The lowest you can give a game is 1.
Third, SWTOR is promoting their game in exactly the same manner as Telara that I'm describing here. They can point to companions and more complex storylines as their innovations, but it's mostly drowned out by massive amounts of lore. The reasons why SWTOR's hype has been dropping are the same as for Rift: Planes of Telara.
Guild Wars 2 most notably isn't doing that, as they're actually not talking about the background lore that much. They're mostly talking about game mechanics.
As for Guild Wars 2 not being that different, fine. Suppose I want an AAA MMORPG with no dedicated healers. How many are there? You can find some, but they tend to be oddball games that are very little like the rest of the genre. That's a radical change to game mechanics, and the entire game has to be designed from the ground up around it. If you try to patch it into a more traditional MMORPG, you'll destroy the game. Maybe it will be great. Maybe it will be horrible. But it will surely be different.
Okay then, what if I hate doing traditional quests and want everything to be dynamic events instead, with informal grouping with everyone else who happens to be in the area without having to officially set up groups? How many games have that? I count zero. That's going to be a huge change from the traditional, go around looking for exclamation marks over NPCs heads that people have come to expect. I actually think it won't work very well: ArenaNet will deliver what they promised, but it won't be what players expect, and will be rife with too low levels wanting free powerleveling and too high levels making things trivial. But it's surely going to be very different, and a much bigger departure from industry norms than the rifts of Rift: Planes of Telara, which could be thought of as a far milder version of a similar concept.
Actually, Champions Online has a different take: make PvE easy enough that you can take whatever you want and still win.
Now, maybe you don't like that system. I don't like it when games go too far with versatility, either, and absolutely loathed the secondary classes in Guild Wars. But it's a lot more versatility it appears this game will have. What I was disagreeing with was your original claim of: "I haven't seen any other game that has given quite as much options when it comes to building a class."
Though I guarantee you that this game will have the same problem you described of flavor of the month builds. It will simply be to a lesser degree, because of less versatility.
Well, I have enjoyed the discussion. And I have to take back my comment about features in GW2....since I read a post where you listed features above and beyond the "Holy Trinity" changes.
GW2 is now solidly in my #2 position of upcoming MMOs.
In GW2, it doesn't seem to be anything like an FFA. You can spec twoards a certain build type, yes, but its more about how you do things and the fact that every profession has its own unique mechanic to set it apart from the others. You will also never have a pure support/damage/control build because of the way the skill system works. And your self healing skill is ALWAYS more powerful than a heal from allies. The heals from others are usually suplimentary, at best.
A few examples. The elementalist's unique mechanic is attunement. It changes the weapon skills (1-5) at the click of a button to a different style. Each element has a different style and changes the way the elementalist plays at a moments notice in combat. Water has a lot of cc in the form of snares and the intrinsic benefit of minor healing. Fire has a lot of DoT and damageing attacks, Air has cc in the form of blinding and burst damage viability, earth is more defensive and can control oponents by knocking them down and I think may buff defense.
Now, compare that to the Necromancer. The necro has a Death Shrowd mechanic that switches out the necro's skill bar for 4 powerful skills and health bar for a lifeforce bar that goes down automatically and when attacked. It is charged by certain skills in and out of death shrowd as well as killing foes. This combines with the unique skill types avaliable to the necromancer, aoe effects that provide constant buffs and debuffs, create an entirely different style of play and feel from the elementalist.
So, in GW2, its not always what you do, but how you do it. Every profession can fulfill any role, but they all do it differently. Some will be better at a role, probably, but not in every situation. I'm sure there are times I would rather have ranger spirits instead of a necromancer mark/well. A ranger with a sword will never play like a warrior with a sword.
I really need to make a comprehensive post/article somewhere that details the skill/combat system in depth. I suppose the articles on GW2.com and the ArenaNet blog do this, but if you don't put it all together it just doesn't have the same impact.
Disagreement Heirarchy
Enjoyed your post but just so were clear, my comments about versatility were not directly pointed at GW2. I was defending RIFTs class system because I do think its very versatile.
I have not played MMOs as long as some people (Shadowbane was my first) but the system you described, well, that for once seems new.
As I understand it, depending on the class they can switch into another form? And you can do this midfight?
The closest thing that reminds me of, and dont be offended is a class in WoW called the Druid.
A druid in the course of one 1v1 fight could, open from stealth (cat form) , turn into a bear (a tank form) and charge you, run away in a travel form, switch to caster form, heal, and cast from range. Now...depending on how the druid specs, really determines which of those things he does very well. And switching between forms allows the druid different abilities in those forms.
You could go feral which focuses more on the melle in cat and bear forms.
Balance is the direct dmg caster.
Restoration focuses on healing.
For me to understand, thats what it sort of reminds me of.
For good gameplay, I don't think it's purely more versatility versus less. Rather, I think that the question is what sort of variety it entails. Given a particular challenge, different classes ought to be able to meet that challenge, but need to meet the challenge in different ways. Thus, playing thorough a quest or mission on one character, and then doing the same on a different character of a different class can give a fairly different experience. This is tricky to do without making one class clearly stronger than another. Still, when done properly, the variety across classes adds a lot of replay value.
The other sort of versatility that I like is for a given class to be forced to employ very different tactics in order to meet different challenges. When a game degenerates into, use skill 1, then skill 2, then skill 3 for maximum damage--and do that against every single mob you meet in the entire game, that's boring. It's far more interesting if you have to use different skills against different mobs, or better yet, different combinations of skills. That means that there's variety across content within a class, so that different areas of the game can have a very different feel. That's far better than if fighting mobs in one zone feels exactly like fighting mobs in a different zone, with only different graphics.
That's also tricky to do--and nearly impossible to do with the "holy trinity" setup. A designated tank has to always grab mobs and get them to focus fire on him. A designated healer has to always watch life bars and heal. You can try to put a little bit of variety into this, but I've never seen a game succeed in squeezing that much variety into healing. Saying you can switch from a tank to a healer and back is merely trying to take the variety across characters style and squish it into a single character, which doesn't add to the variety of gameplay available.
I think the best example of the second kind of versatility that I've seen is the mesmer class in Guild Wars. In some areas of the game, mobs cast some really nasty hexes, so it's critical that you bring hex removal skills to clear them. In others, mobs won't use hexes at all, or will only use hexes that are easily ignored, such as mild health degeneration. There, you don't want to bring hex removal, as you need the skillbar slots for other things. Even if you're going to bring hex removal, do you bring one skill, two, or three? Normal skills only, or use up your elite slot? But mesmers aren't just for hex removal; they also do enchantment removal, energy denial, apply various hexes, disable mob skills, and interrupt skills. And that's all quite apart from damage, which you also want to do. And even if you know that you want to bring three interrupts, which three? They have different cooldowns, different energy usage, different other effects (some damage, disable the skill, gain energy yourself, etc.), and can interrupt different types of enemy skills, so they're not interchangeable. You get eight skillbar slots, so two of these and three of those means you run out very quickly, and you have to choose carefully. This forces a mesmer to use wildly different playing styles from one zone to another in order to be useful, and to constantly change around his build to bring skills that are important and not ones that are useless.
In contrast, a healing monk, even in the same game, has nearly the same task everywhere: watch lifebars and heal whoever is taking damage. Sure, there are both direct heals and protection skills to prevent damage, instant heals and heals over time, individual heals and group heals, and so forth. Monks have something like 50 or 70 healing skills in Guild Wars (mainly healing and protection attributes). But you can pick one build and use it basically everywhere, which isn't much variety. Maybe you swap out one or two skills for hex removal or condition removal, or for heavier group healing, but going from one zone to another doesn't change what a monk does very much. That's not very much variety, which is why most players find it boring--and why it's hard to find enough healers for a group in most games that require player healers.
I didn't say it only drops when it is low scored. I said that it was dropping very rapidly in a short period, which hints at a large influx of low scoring. There is a difference there.
As for not being able to vote 0, like I said before I hadn't used the hype meter since Age of Conan so I'll amend my statement to an influx of 1 voting.
As for being different, show me a game where I can be a warrior wielding Sword and Shield, have a melee pet, do AOE damage and hand out significant combat buffs to my party. Or what if I want want to be a Rogue that teleports in, strikes my opponent with poisoned daggers, hit them with some elemental magical damage, teleport out, then stealth away. Or a Rogue that teleports in, plants an AOE bomb/explosive in the middle of a group, teleports out, then opens up at range with my bow and sending in my pet to mop up.
I mean, we can play this back and forth game drawing examples from what each game offers that the other doesn't and trying to make the other seem lacking, dull or "the norm" all day. It's pointless exercise to say the least. I mean like the dynamic grouping question you posed, if you only did the rift content in Rifts, of which there 6 different flavors of rift (the 6 Planes) and there are different kinds of Rifts (some more dangerous than others) then your count goes to 1. People don't have to be in a hard defined group in order to work together and share the benefits of a rift content event.
I'm not trying to (which should be very evident) discredit GW2. As I said before I haven't really looked at it more than 10 or 12 times. I know that I am not really interested in playing it, especially if it is as cutscene heavy as a gameplay video I watched for an archer a few days ago. That, and the controller scheme, was a large part of why I didn't buy into FFXIV and is only a small part of why I won't be purchasing SWTOR.
That said, I hope GW2 does well. I have no interest in it, but I'm not going and hyping it at a 1. Then again, the hype score doesn't really matter to me. I like to do my own research for titles that interest me and make my own educated decision. It is pretty accurate to say that the majority of scorers for hype meters aren't educated and have hardly made a decision, lol.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Very true.
but, alas, thats what happens here on this site, and thats why no one except newbies and idiots put any value on the MMORPG.com hype score.
You can do that in Guild Wars 1, as has been out for five years, and you can do that today. You'd need to take a ranger secondary for the pet, though. It's actually not far from how I often play my warrrior, with whirlwind attack and hundred blades for the AoE damage, a pet to eat some enemy blows and get in the way, and watch yourself for a group buff.
I've conceded that the rifts here are a significant departure from the industry norm. Will six types of rifts with varying difficulties for each really be enough to carry a game, though? For comparison, Guild Wars 2 has about 1500 custom scripted dynamic events. That sure sounds to me like taking the same basic concept a whole lot further.
I doubt that Guild Wars 2 will really be all that cutscene heavy. It will have cutscenes to explain the storyline, but it won't be like you're getting interrupted by one every ten minutes. Guild Wars 1 had a cutscene at the end of each mission, and sometimes at the start or in the middle, and only a few other places in the game. (There are a total of 69 missions in the game, spread across three campaigns and an expansion.) You could skip any cutscene if you wanted to, though.
To your earlier question about having a game with no dedicated healers, Asheron's Call did this some 13 years ago with their system. I'd dare not say that AC was not one of the major games of this industry either.
I've never thought that the rift content would carry the game. It does make up a significant chunk of the game and when added in amongst all the game's other features sounds like some fun gameplay to me. One does have to ask within those 1500 events how many of them are basically the same thing (kill, fetch, gather, defend, attack) events but with different names on the npcs. Course that is a question fair to any game with respect to content.
I can understand why they would have cutscenes, but I'm not a believer in them in relation to MMOs. They are fine in SP RPGs but I'm more from the line of the players make their character's story, not have it told to them from the devs through cutscenes. Different tastes for different people, I know.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
I wondered how the hell scripted content can be dynamic, so I read up on GW2 and can only concluded that dynamic content in GW2 is a completely different concept from the dynamic content in Rift. GW2 took the scripted content a whole lot farther so that it resembles dynamic content. Rift dynamic content contains scripted events, but in contrast to GW2 it is truely dynamic and afaik not replacing questing or taking questing further as GW2 claims it does. They are not to be compared by saying GW2 has 1500 scripted dynamic events and Rift has only rifts opening from 6 different planes. The concepts just differ too much. They only share the name.
It takes one to know one.
The 'hype' score here means very little.
However, from the trend I've seen going on, I'd say that people are voting down every game except GW2.
Although I'm not a conspiracy dude by any measure, people creating duplicate accounts could be an explanation.
SW:TOR has more votes however, so it is slightly more resistant to this effect.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Well then, tell me if I've misunderstood the concept of rifts. As I understand it, it's six different types of rifts that the game engine can drop in a random spot at random times. Mobs come pouring out and the particular mobs depend on the rift. How many come scales with how many players are in the area. I'd expect it to also scale with the level of the players or the level of the area or some such. Mobs that come pouring out can expand and take over areas and cause general mayhem, or players can slaughter them and close the rift.
Compare that with dynamic events in Guild Wars 2. Mobs attack in one area in an event, and players either fight off the mobs or don't. If they don't, then the mobs destroy the area and move on to another in a new event. If players defeat the mobs, then that pushes them back and also starts another event--but a different one from if the players lose. Mobs scale with the number of players in the area. Players in the area share loot even if not formally grouped. But, here's the key: it's not just one event that can be dropped in a random spot on the map. Different regions have their own different events with their own stories, which is where the 1500+ number comes from.
"To your earlier question about having a game with no dedicated healers, Asheron's Call did this some 13 years ago with their system."
Interesting. That goes back to the era before I played MMORPGs, as I had the impression (mostly correct in retrospect) that they were too grindy. Some were trying way too hard to use 3D graphics that looked terrible, too.
"They are fine in SP RPGs but I'm more from the line of the players make their character's story, not have it told to them from the devs through cutscenes."
That usually degenerates into the game not having a storyline at all, whether globally or for individual players, but only some scattered fragments of lore that don't amount to anything coherent. I'd agree with your next sentence after the one I quoted, though.
Hey, I did not say you misunderstood the concept of rifts, I said the concept of dynamic content in both games are not the same. You might be right that GW2 took it further, but to me their explanation of what dynamic content is does not sound like dynamic content at all, just heavily scripted content, which might be a lot of fun, and their claim that it makes quest content way better is probably justified. And that is all that matters in the end, whatever you call it. (It might be, of course, that your understanding of the GW2 dynamic content is better than their explanation of it.)
What is known about rifts and how they are scripted is only known to a small extend. Maybe they top that number of 1500, I doubt it, but that is not what really matters. Will it be fun? Probably. Just like GW2 probably will be fun, but in a different way.
It takes one to know one.
I would like to point out that it takes only a small portion of people to cause these effects. It is not fair to point to the whole following of GW2.
It should also be pointed out that the hype-meter only has one purpose: to attract new subscribers to mmorpg.com. That is why they keep it. But that was clear to most of us already. Mmorpg.com is evil.
It takes one to know one.
I've been following GW2 for a long time now and I can be considered a fan, but hey I dont go hyping down games unless they deserve it. (I de-hyped SW:TOR after viewing a gameplay the animations killed my interest)
But I know very little about Rift (other than the Rifts) to de-hype it.
"It has potential"
-Second most used phrase on existence
"It sucks"
-Most used phrase on existence
That's the only purpose? My, my, such cynicism. It's also there to give us something to argue about, in threads like this.
But yeah, Internet polls are overrated. They don't even restrict to likely voters.
I've noticed you used this as a plus for GW2 a few times but not for Rift. Players involved in a rift event do also share loot even though they aren't formally grouped as well.
Additionally, the rift mobs don't just hang around the rift event area. They can travel to other areas and destroy them too.
"A specific rift event only grows to a certain size (this may vary depending on how they play in testing) but in addition to that planar incursions can go beyond a rift event and actually travel over the lands and destroy other areas as well as other rift types."
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Of course. No need to be cynical about it. Or naive.
It takes one to know one.
Hype means absolutely nothing, I say do your own research.
Well if you notice.
GW2 has 1600 something votes.
Rift has 647 votes while TOR has 3400 something votes.
So what is going on here ? The more people that start to vote for rift the lower the hype rating will be. It is just evening itself out. BTW the hype rating on this site is a joke and not to be taken seriously, tbh.
"When it comes to GW2 any game is fair game"