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Why Level 15 was important before judging the game
Riftsoldier
Member Posts: 112
My friend tried the beta with me on my recommendation. He is from the oldschool games and has tried many over the years. We both saw issues with EQ, he never got into WoW.
As he looked at the different choices he decided to roll a Cabalist combo (don't remember his other 2 souls). After playing thru the tutorial and and getting into the full game he started seeing his character survability drop a bit. He got to about level 9 and was very discouraged by the game and the experiance all based off his one character choice and limited exposure to the game.
I then told him let's re-roll and try the oppisite faction. He chose a different mix Champion, Beastmaster mostly. This time around he really got into the combat and the chosen souls. He enjoyed it so much he played for about 15 hours strait...( minus the breaks for food and bathroom of course). He got his up to level 16 and I got mine to 17. We did a ton of quests to start with and as the map opened up we did Rift raids as well. When we got into the 13 and 14 we reached the main city and explored. I found a few pvp quest givers and we joined PvP. We leveled up from then on in the PvP arenas and completed the quests from there which gave us fantastic blue item quality weapons. This cemented his experiance and we would have even played more into the night but he had to work early in the morning and I told him .... "balance is important between gaming and everything else".
My point is that there are several people that are still lurking on Rift forums that either don't like it, or haven't really tried it and formed a conclusion without giving it a chance. I am not saying you need to play to level 30 or whatever. But there are very key levels when you get access to important parts of the game that you can't really see until then. One of them is being able to see the map and participate in the zone wide rifts, another is the PvP aspect where you can level just doing that if you want. And a final thing is the ability to gain access to quests for more souls. The role switching is very important to this game since you can gain all the extra souls and then make rolls with them but not until you reach around 15th level and get to the main city.
It's a shame for those that really didn't get to experiance the full and rich content this game offers. But then again if they don't spend the time to truely get to know it then maybe they are not worthy of such a fun experiance in the long run.
Comments
You also need to try a few soul combos from the Callings you want to play. I tried all 4 Callings during beta6 with a few different combos so I could figure out what I prefer as most combos will play completely differently. You also need to take advantage of the multiple roles in different situations. For example, I prefer not to use a pet in pvp so I had one Role (RNGR/MM/SIN) for PvE leveling and another (MM/Sin/Sab) for PvP.
I never got particularly high during both Beta6 and Beta7 and I played the opposite faction to mid levels so when I play at launch it will be fairly new content for me.
You're on the right lines when you say people shouldn't judge the game too early.................. but............. even level fifteen is too soon. I've been in since beta 2 , when I posted here and on the official Rift forums that I thought the game was too linear and unoriginal.
However, I stuck with it and cant believe how I keep discovering new stuff all the time. By beta 4 or so, I was sold on the game and pre-ordered. I've been making new characters every new beta test and in all of them never got out of teen levels. As this was the last, I carried on with the latest up to level 22. Quite apart from moving to a new area, I found a whole load of new monsters to fight, new types of quests, new types of Rifts, new Warfronts... the game really changed. I'm really sold on this game... it's the best new one I've found since LotRO, four years ago and I've tried lots.
This^^^ At level 15 you start to see the potential the game has. Once you get out of the starting zone, the game really starts to ramp up. As liking to be able to explore and find things, I'm really grateful that they put some nice things in there. Puzzles, Artifact placements, achievements, rare mobs, rare events. good stuff
Yes at first i didnt like much about rift. I only played a few hours each beta and then stopped playing.
I decided to give the game a chance again and started to play a new class till lvl 15 and got over the ''seen it all before part''.
The game really has alot of subtle nice things to it that you dont right away notice.Speciallly once you start taking classes more seriously and their mix and spec options.
At first i didnt like much at all about rift to be honest. I thought the graphics were so so, the combat animation so so, combat graphics so so, rifts so so, classes so so and quests i found boring. However the more i play it the more the game grew onto me till i started getting addicted to it and ended up pre-ordering.
I like the high amount of customization options to characters. I like how crafting is done, how soultrees are done, how there's multiple ways of getting great loot and xp''ing. I like how rifts and rift invasions give the game a truely dynamic feel and give an mmorpg the much needed community which new mmorpgs are often lacking. I like how there's quests to discover which are away from the regular questhub-to-questhub path. I like how there's funny drops from mobs, like turning into a bat to give greater travel speed, i like how there's things to discover and exploration pays off., i like how there's many fun and cool touches to the game once you pay attention to it. I even think combat looks cool now once i started paying attention to the animations more.
There's alot of things to like about rift really. I havent even seen any dungeon yet. There's much more there then the initial impression.
You just need to take notice of what the game all has to offer and compared to recent new mmorpg releases it has a very solid experience when it comes to polish and content. Don't do as i did and look at the game the wrong way when its your first time. There's much more to the game then initial newby-zone-warhammer experience.
I dont care if ill play it 1 month or 6 months, for me usually 6 months is alot already, but i know ill enjoy my time in rift. I think the developers did an excellent job and im pretty sure its money well spent.
I'd agree on needing to reach a certain level before being able to really judge a game, especially if you consider stuff like PvP being brought into the picture. Still, there's two reasons why this does not mean you should play Rift up to level 15 before being able to say that you do not like it:
A game is more than a collection of features. I could tell you loads of awesome things about EVE Online, Lord of the Rings Online, World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Fallen Earth, Everquest II, and so on andsoforth, but that does not mean that anybody who agrees that those are awesome features will also like the game. There are other things to consider, such as the UI, intuitive controls, graphics, sound, immersion, and overall feel. Those never appeal to everybody. I can really see why Rift is a great game, but I did not like the general atmosphere throughout the story and quests. I can't really put my finger on it and, given the awesome character specialisation options, I really want to like Rift, but I just don't like the setting, I am not entirely comfortable with the combat mechanics, and the rift system is nothing more than a tacked on gimmick I will most likely not enjoy on the long term (yes, I'm picky like that, but it's my money on the counter, so I have every right to be). So, great game, but not exactly to my tastes. Including PvP and other features does not change the general atmosphere, which is what I dislike most.
Every single MMO that I know of has benchmark levels like the type you're describing, not the least of which is end-game. For every MMO I know, gameplay changes at key points in the game. In World of Warcraft, it's when you can start running battlegrounds, when you get your flying mount, when you get to arenas, and when you can go run heroics and raids. In Fallen Earth, it's when you enter into faction PvP. In Lord of the Rings Online, unlocking Skirmishes is a big thing, as are your Legendary Traits and Legendary Weapons. Warhammer Online doesn't really start until you're in the highest tier of PvP and even then, you really wanna reach a higher PvP Rank before actually being able to see your character have an impact in PvP. In EVE Online, the game changes whenever you have reached the goal you have set for yourself and have to think of a new one. In Champions Online, the game kicks off when you can start running Serpent Lantern and when you get to create your own Nemesis. The bottom line is that, if you can not really judge Rift before having reached level 15 and thus are not really able to say it is not a game you want to play, this also goes for all other MMOs. In that sense, if it is true that, if you have not reached level 15, you have no reason not to play the game, it is not automatically true that you have a reason to play the game if you have not reached level 15. After all, if it was true that not having reached all benchmarks in any MMO means you should play said MMO before being able to decide whether you like it or not, you would be a hypocrit for not playing every single MMO up to every single benchmark, as it is definitely true that there exists an MMO you have decided not to play despite never having reached every benchmark in that MMO. (And yes, everybody who has ever specifically looked for an MMO has done that. I do not believe that anybody on these forums has not encountered at least one MMO of which they decided beforehand that they were never going to play it.)
TL;DR:
Rift has plenty good things going for it, but nothing is liked by everybody. Accept that. Also, if not having reached level 15 means you are not "worthy" to comment, consider that you have not reached all benchmark levels in all MMOs and that at least for some of those MMOs you have decided you are never going to play them. Granted, there is a difference between deciding for yourself and denouncing your interest in the game publicly, but voicing an opinion is no crime if having an opinion is not.
I started with the cabalist class too and until you get the purifier shield (if you take this class), the survivability is quite hard. I didn't like the starting areas because you move from camp to camps really fast and i like to stick around a town a bit and enjoy the scenery. When i reached Argent Glade and Sanctum and invasions/Rift started, then i really started to enjoy the game. You get more spells for your class, you run instances, do rifts, craft, etc.
I got two characters to level 30. A mage and a rogue type. The game past 20 is very different as your skills start to make sense and things start coming together quite a bit more so. It seems a lot of people base their opinion of the entire game off just the first 10 levels and that isn't even close to how the game plays out later. I played on a pvp server and after 20, a lot of things change. Some people become discouraged hitting the pvp zones and get ganked a few times. I encouraged a few people to venture further in since the entrance areas can be haunted by people looking for noobs. Further in, it's not nearly as bad and in most cases, I could go an entire day without seeing an enemy player, while I was questing.
Either way, levels 1-15, and I would say anything shy of 20, are personally not enough time invested to get an accurate vision of the game. I guess the same could be said for most games however.
I don't see what the fuss is about. If 15 is the "aha" moment for this game, then that's great, because you can get to 15 within a few hours. It took waaaaaay longer for me to like EQ, SWG, FFXI, WoW, EVE, etc. 15 is nothing.
Ok this might be a bit offtopic here but anyways:
Hey hey, don't diss cabalist! I LOVED playing one and when you threw in some shaman tricks you are ready to rule the world. That guy was a really hard nut to crack and you could easily take care of 4-5 guys of your level. That's going to be my main.
And yeah, I'm talking only about the PvE side here, haven't still tried the PvP since I don't see any point on PvP minigames. Open world PvP is more my thing.
Played to level 40 beleive it or not, to really give it a shot, and I can safely say, nope the game isn t good. To me that is. Alot will like it, many old time gamers won t as evident in FFXI recently a ton coming back.