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Rift Quick Review
Pros
good gfx
polished game
constant updates
semi-classless
useful crafting system
dynamic world
ecourages pvp
Cons
classes and souls are clones
interface and combat are very repetitive
quests and world events are very repetitive
pvp can be imbalanced
game requires group play to fully experience, but game also encourages solo play
level and gear grind
no bigger purpose to pvp, no terrirorty, guild housing
empty player base on many servers, and even active servers you never see anyone work together meaningfully
This is based on 2 months of play, 10-20 hours a week, leveling a main toon to 39 and one toon of every other class, before I finally got so bored of quests and repetition that I quit. The game has a lot going for it, but it just gets really old, and even on a active server, its somtimes impossible to find anyone to group up for world events, which means its impossible to earn rare gear for weeks by which time youve leveled past it. These are just a couple of things I hate about wow clone mmos.
Comments
Add Cons
Smallest Game world of any AAA MMO
No Depth or Replayability
"classes and souls are clones"
The souls are clones for the first few skills/spells, but the class are not clones since there are many combinations of souls possible. But I agree that it felt cloned in early levels, but in high level you can customize your soul tree to whatever you want...meaning less class clone.
"interface and combat are very repetitive"
I agree that combat is very repetitive which kills replayability.
"pvp can be imbalanced"
I have not seen a balanced PvP. They all "can be" imbalanced...thus there's a winner in the end. Right? Else it would be an endless stalemate.
"level and gear grind"
OMG this game is horrible in terms of gears. Leveling up isn't too bad...other than the repetitiveness.
"no bigger purpose to pvp, no terrirorty, guild housing"
Isn't that ashame. The rifts and the invasions can be ignored. It will be reset eventually anyway.
"This is based on 2 months of play, 10-20 hours a week, leveling a main toon to 39 and one toon of every other class, before I finally got so bored of quests and repetition that I quit. The game has a lot going for it, but it just gets really old, and even on a active server, its somtimes impossible to find anyone to group up for world events, which means its impossible to earn rare gear for weeks by which time youve leveled past it. These are just a couple of things I hate about wow clone mmos."
I played a bit longer than you and made it to Level 47 with one toon and level 20s on my other toons. I even made a Defiant toon only to find that the quests are almost mirrored for both Factions with similar quest paths.
I admit that I enjoyed the game for what it's worth, and that is $4.99 + 3 months of sub.
Now I'm waiting for something better. *whisper*GW2*whisper*
Ready for GW2!!!
I feel the same way as the OP... This game had so much potential I believe personally for me it really came down to it pushes SOLO play.. that drove me away.. Ohh and the patches every other day.
But in before some fanboi reads that above and says "You don't know what you're talking about. Our population isn't dropping; it's growing. I just saw 3000 people join our guild yesterday. RIFT has 500K subs." You know it's coming.
RIFT fans to a man/woman always say how populated the game is since everyone came over from WoW.
"TO MICHAEL!"
What i mean is the description and effect of many skills are exactly the same. Same dmg, same cooldown. They just copied and pasted.
Semi true, Souls are made to build on each other and have Synergy together. It is actually Lore based if you check those books they have laying around. Elementalist was the first mage, so the base root abilities in Stormcaller are similar. It was mostly done for Synergy, so that going a little bit into one tree would buff another.
Interface can be more custonmized then any MMO I have ever seen outside of WoW with their add on system
Combat can be repetitive due to no real time stuff like dodging like in Tera or GW2
PvP can be imbalanced. Core issue here is it seems Trion had a vision of how they wanted pvp to be and souls to be picked and min/max'rs ripped it apart.
To get that epic feel of taking down a raid boss with 20 people after tons of wipes yes that is how the best gear is achieved. Chronicles were made to address the solo request. In all honestly I never thought they would add solo instances to the game, since the people they are adding them far will probably not come back anyways.
Level and gear grind: GW2 and a few others that way ----->. Never seen a game go main stream that has not done this
No bigger purpose to pvp: Double edged sword here because Aion had a purpose and i resulted in massive faction imbalance that completely destroyed servers and made it pointless to log on. WoW managed to have Wintergrasp flip every day, but it seemed trivial to try to even defend it because the defender had to have a dis advantage always or it would never flip.
/who confirms people are there in the zones. Just narrow it to 1-10, 10-19, 20-29 and you will ussually see it caps out at 29 people for each class.
I know. I used that all the time to see if anyone was around to do the world events that pop up. Often there were 2 other people in the zone, and less than 10 on in the level range of the event. This was after I switched from a low to medium server. But thats not the real issue. Its the same old problem as other games where people are seperated by class, level, location, purpose, time zone, server and many other factors, which server to limit the people you have to play with. Rift being having lots of group opportunies just means you end up missing out because of these factors.
Bought it some days too as the price went down to 7€.
Good:
+ graphics are fine (though not jawdropping)
+ at first there is lots to try out
+ easy to get into
+ exploring rewards you with little stuff
Bad:
- only two character slots per shard? O_O
- no replayability (ie only 4 actual classes and 2 starting zones in total)
- quests are even designed in a way that you won't read them
- absolute dead silence in the game (on the server I am on), noone talks, ever
- little change in scenery so far (playing for quite a number of hours and I'm still stuck in a forest, and the next zone seems to be forest too)
So, since it's that cheap, I guess it's fun for a while, shut off your brain and try out some classes and stuff. But I don't think it will keep me going for long.
If I'd give the game an overall rating, from 1 (absolutely unplayable, can't stand it for a single second) to 10 (the best game I ever played, I will quit my job so I can play it more) I'd give it a 7. The game is good and solid, but it's very shallow, no replayability and not much going on.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
What server were you on? Right now Rift suffers from the same problem every game with multiple servers has. Some are low and some are concentrated high. Good look at a Wow server status screen and you will see what I mean.
Trions solution for this is kind of interesting. They made server transfers permanently free with a 7 day lock out. The general idea goes that they figured there was no actual reason to charge for something that is literally instant and it allows people to find a server that works for their time zone.
Ever since they have done this and x-server LFG pretty much 100% of "omg this game is dying" threads vanished. Trust me I read the forums a lot.
Bad:
- only two character slots per shard? O_O
Should be more then two. More like 6 slots per shard I think.
I feel like I got my money's worth up to 50. I have alts of each class, as well. I had fun leveling in groups with invasions and Rifts.
But when I hit 50, I just didn't want to go through the whole gearing up for raiding and doing dailies -- again. If you've never done it before, it might be fun for you. Rift is a fine game if raiding and leveling up your gear is what you enjoy.
Since I've done it before, I'm just not interested in doing it again. It doesn't matter about lore, graphics, whatever. It's the same plot, so to speak. So I unsubbed and I'm looking forward to trying other games that might offer something different: GW2, ArcheAge, Wildstar.
Rift is not a bad game at all. Just depends on what you want to do.
EDIT: There are 6 character slots per shard. I played on Laethys and Dayblind - both Oceanic servers, both very well populated. I believe Defiant outnumbers Guardian on Dayblind (pvp shard) but there is a decent sense of community among the Guardians there from my experience. A lot of Defiant on Laethys and Meridian is always packed and I usually see lots of people leveling in the various zones.
Here is another con of the game..
Due to the way the game plays and is sooooo Solo oriented. and due to having custom builds along every class line.. I found almost everyone wanted to DPS.. It was hard to find people that would ever truly want to tank, or heal, or CC in RIFT. Yes there would be players that would have it as a 2ndardy but manytimes they didnt know what they were doing in those 2ndardies. Which made for the few times you actually could get a group going that the groups generally were no good. Also almost everyone always QUEUES up in the queues as DPS column. Which means extremely long wait times on queues alot of the time.
It is hard for you guys to have it both ways. First the game caters too much to the raid crowd which by its very definition is more then 5 people doing something and now it caters to much to the solo crowd.
I can see why the content seems so off. Release they almost looked identical to Blizzard with the new raid every month and now to make the "I want solo stuff to do endgame" people happy they basically popped 3-4 solo instances out of thin air and Master mode instances that are for 5 people to get raid gear.
I guess whateverrrr data they had said that people HATE being forced to group while leveling. There is not some big boss between Silverwood and Gloomwood that requires 10 people to take down or you can not progress. There is honestly nothing stopping you from asking the guy questing around you to group for some of the solo quest. They just do not force you too.
Love it or hate it this is where mmo's are heading into this wierd solo and optional raid thing to get to end game.
I am on Asphodel which is medium most of the time. I know how to look it up and I know how to transfer. And Im not a fan of cross server lfg becuase it further isolates you from the people you are playing with. Im not a fan of pugs whatsover, but the game discourages socializing to make friends. But look, my point is this is what happens with clones these days. Too much focus on pointless quests, leveling and gear grind, and not enough on the massive multiplayer part.
I dont it want it both ways. I want it one way: less AI, more actual people. And no leveling.
1. From 1-50 RIFT is extremely solo oriented. You don't need to have anyone help you with much. The rifts can even be soloed, although you won't reach the last stages solo but you CAN close them. There are a super amount of typical DIKU hub quests that have so many solo quests you don't need help. The only real things you need help on are the elite rifts and the saga quests.... just about everything else is easily done.
2. After you hit 50, the game does a 180 and it's totally all group dependant. From them on it's dungeons galore and elite rifts, crafting rifts, that kind of stuff. There isn't much solo content here or things for people that are diverse other than the dailies.
I'm pretty sure that's what people are saying about the game. There isn't enough balance. In many ways it's like sitting down to a full course meal (which RIFT has a lot of content) but the chef serves it like:
- first you get a plate of meat.
- then you get a plate of veggies.
- then you get a plate of gravy.
- then you get a plate of bread.
The game doesn't balance itself well enough from start to end due to how easy it is to level. Because it's so easy you aren't set up where you actually need people to hit 50 fast. Other games you can solo to max as well, but because the grinds are longer and mobs are tougher, you generally will be looking to group most of the time. In Rift there really isn't that need until after 50.
"TO MICHAEL!"