The game is god's given gift to all gamers. That is, until it leaves the developer phase and enters open beta. Until we get there, lets keep our excitement in check, shall we?
Besides, you're comparing apples with oranges (themepark with sandbox). It's like comparing turned based strategy games with real time ones. You can do it, doesn't make much sense though.
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these. Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs
The quests are similar to other mmorpgs I have played i.e. gather, kill, talk to, craft quests. If you are against this system of quests then be consistent and be against this in all mmoprgs that have a quest system. The Lore is no better or worse than WAR or WOW. Also there are so MANY quests on Guardian side so I dont know what you're talking about unless this is an issue on Defiant. So complaining about the quest system in Rift (same as the quest system in most mmorpgs I have played) is like complaining that a first-person shooter "has guns".
Graphics: I could tolerate WAR's graphics, which says a lot. Why people say this game looks amazing is beyond me. Even on ultra the world seems incredibly dull, with little detail to it. However, cities are the noteworthy exception. Aside from that, it was so bad, I actually felt excited when I saw a bunny hopping around. Obviously, the developers didn't waste time adding fluff like wildlife, flowers or shrubbery. Mountains with low poly textures, mobs that are absolutely hideous, way too much gray/brown/dark green - it's depressing.
Maybe this an opinion thing. I play on highest setting and the graphics are MUCH better to my eye than WAR and WOW, but nowhere near as good as AOC. My favourite style was the humour of WOW's design, but if we are on about graphics then Rifts looks more sophisticated and indeed one mate just had to upgrade his PC to handle RIFT on highest settings, which was not a problem with his old PC on WAR and WOW.
Combat: I only leveled a cleric up to 30. That being said, I found the skills lackluster and the animations (with the exception of some Warden heals) not worth mentioning. Most importantly, in order to kill mobs you end up pressing the same 3 buttons over and over. Very fun! To spice it up, you can get the ugliest fairy yet to be shown in a video game, to heal and dps with you! If I remember correctly the "pet" heals you for 20 pts every few seconds, while drawing aggro from mobs at the other end of the map. Almost everybody uses a pet for leveling, regardless of class. So you'll see 1000000000000 boars, undead knights, or fairies following players around. Why is that? Because the moment you attack one mob, you draw aggro from at least two others. It's your pet's job to tank them, unless it's a fairy. Then you'll just die.
I have two toons at lv 19 and lv16. I press more than three buttons and have done so since about lv11-15. You point is so simply untrue in my experience.
The fairy is ugly for sure and the game does seem to have pet overload but I love pets and you can rename them all. I found my Ranger pet is beefy and important, while my beatsmaster one is just cosmetic because I spent all my points in the Pally tree.
Animations are not any worse than WOW and WAR.
PvP: = The only reason I play online games. Well, in Rift there are warfronts, which will make Nordenwatch or Arathi Basin look like the apex of entertaining game design. Again, I only made it to 30, but to my knowledge only 4 different warfronts exist. Anyway, all can be summed up as either capture the flag or hold stupid relic for points. No worries, it gets old quickly. On the bright side, if you do enough warfronts, you can buy pvp gear, which is always a good thing for us non-raiders.
They have battlegrounds like WAR and WOW. I have only played The Black Gardens and I had a lot of fun just like I had fun in WOW and WAR battlegrounds. If anything I think the Black Garden (carry the relic) is better than the WAR equivalent (cant remember it's name) because it has better tactical terrain and less of a chokepoint.
Again, if you are really against this battleground then you are gonna have to be consistent and be against similar types of battlegrounds in most other games. It's like complaining that Left4Dead or Dead Rising is rubbish because it "has zombies".
That leaves world pvp. Well, during head start everybody and their mom power-leveled, so I didn't experience much of that. I assume, it's going to be fine, as long as Rift can retain its subscriber base. Longevity, however, is questionable without rvr objectives.
Not seen any yet so cant comment. But that is perhaps due to my level.
Rifts: Every 5-10 minutes a tentacle thing appears in the sky and spawns an army of mobs that will invade your quest hub. Your job is it then to dps them down, heal the unlucky players who are getting mowed over, and of course, die a lot. After the 10th rift, it became quite tedious.
I've been enjoying the Rifts. I don't seek them out but if I see one on my travels I will jump and this is a welcome distraction (with rewards) from crafting or questing and so on.
Like anything, this could get old after a month or two so I hope that Trion will had some more randomness to these events (special mobs, or extra rounds and so on) to keep it fresh.
Soul System: Switching between specs out of combat is a nice idea. Still doesn't make the abilities you get for each spec more interesting.
Soul system offers a LOT more choice and flexibility than WAR and WOW. I think this is a fact. Really. Now this may lead to cookie cutter PVE and PVP builds at endgame, but thus far I feel amazed at my choices for building hybrid classes. The only criticism I could imagine is if it is too much choice and that that most of those chocies are superficial, but I don't see it that way yet and would only know after playing endgame for a week or so.
Spawn Rates: Another fun timesink. Since there are so many players, by the time you want to kill your named mob, or gather whatever item you need, it will be gone. Then you can prepare yourself for 5 minutes of doing nothing while it respawns. Hopefully, you'll be quick enough to click it first or you'll have to wait again. Better frantically invite every player in the area to your group and hope if one clicks it, it will count for you too.
Queues: Well, the servers with pvp guilds worth playing against have 1-4 hour queues, each and every time you try to log in. For some reason, people find the game so enjoyable they are willing to put up with that. More power to them.
Both points above are just plain stupid. You are criticising the game for being too popular on release.
As for time-sink. Well all mmorpgs I have played have been timesinks. Some more enjoyable than others, but all time-sinks nonetheless. Just fiddling while Rome burns imo. Again, if you are against time-sinks in mmorpgs be against ALL time-sinks in all mmorpgs. It's like criticisng McDonalds because they "have burgers".
Obviously, all the reasons why I am underwhelmed with Rift are subjective. But I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game.
I fully expect to be flamed for this
Regards
Melmoth
ed because my Japanese PC created a long string of ?????, hehe. Fixed now.
After reading all the negative reviews about the game (dull, unimaginative, etc.), I decided "screw that" and bought it anyway.
Admittedly, with WAR dead, I was desperately hoping for a new pvp game. I had Rift beta access, didn't bother playing, and as a result wasted $50 bucks.
To make it short, I find the game incredibly unfun. It is, in fact, the most boring game I have played in a long long time. Here's why:
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these. Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs.
Graphics: I could tolerate WAR's graphics, which says a lot. Why people say this game looks amazing is beyond me. Even on ultra the world seems incredibly dull, with little detail to it. However, cities are the noteworthy exception. Aside from that, it was so bad, I actually felt excited when I saw a bunny hopping around. Obviously, the developers didn't waste time adding fluff like wildlife, flowers or shrubbery. Mountains with low poly textures, mobs that are absolutely hideous, way too much gray/brown/dark green - it's depressing.
Combat: I only leveled a cleric up to 30. That being said, I found the skills lackluster and the animations (with the exception of some Warden heals) not worth mentioning. Most importantly, in order to kill mobs you end up pressing the same 3 buttons over and over. Very fun! To spice it up, you can get the ugliest fairy yet to be shown in a video game, to heal and dps with you! If I remember correctly the "pet" heals you for 20 pts every few seconds, while drawing aggro from mobs at the other end of the map. Almost everybody uses a pet for leveling, regardless of class. So you'll see 1000000000000 boars, undead knights, or fairies following players around. Why is that? Because the moment you attack one mob, you draw aggro from at least two others. It's your pet's job to tank them, unless it's a fairy. Then you'll just die.
PvP: = The only reason I play online games. Well, in Rift there are warfronts, which will make Nordenwatch or Arathi Basin look like the apex of entertaining game design. Again, I only made it to 30, but to my knowledge only 4 different warfronts exist. Anyway, all can be summed up as either capture the flag or hold stupid relic for points. No worries, it gets old quickly. On the bright side, if you do enough warfronts, you can buy pvp gear, which is always a good thing for us non-raiders.
That leaves world pvp. Well, during head start everybody and their mom power-leveled, so I didn't experience much of that. I assume, it's going to be fine, as long as Rift can retain its subscriber base. Longevity, however, is questionable without rvr objectives.
Rifts: Every 5-10 minutes a tentacle thing appears in the sky and spawns an army of mobs that will invade your quest hub. Your job is it then to dps them down, heal the unlucky players who are getting mowed over, and of course, die a lot. After the 10th rift, it became quite tedious.
Soul System: Switching between specs out of combat is a nice idea. Still doesn't make the abilities you get for each spec more interesting.
Spawn Rates: Another fun timesink. Since there are so many players, by the time you want to kill your named mob, or gather whatever item you need, it will be gone. Then you can prepare yourself for 5 minutes of doing nothing while it respawns. Hopefully, you'll be quick enough to click it first or you'll have to wait again. Better frantically invite every player in the area to your group and hope if one clicks it, it will count for you too.
Queues: Well, the servers with pvp guilds worth playing against have 1-4 hour queues, each and every time you try to log in. For some reason, people find the game so enjoyable they are willing to put up with that. More power to them.
Obviously, all the reasons why I am underwhelmed with Rift are subjective. But I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game.
I fully expect to be flamed for this
Not only do I not have a flame for ya, I think you're spot on. Rift is... well, it's just boring. I played in beta, got a couple toons into the 20's (just *casual* playing in beta duo'ing with my wife, mind you) and the content had us missing Azeroth a great deal.
The "warfronts" in Rift are a joke. I'd rather run Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin - they take longer to complete, seem to require more strategy, and are just... well, more fun. I used to play Warhammer Online, too, and maybe I just expect more from my PvP in a game now. The scenarios in Warhammer were better than the warfronts in Rift, and Warhammer is a game that was released years ago.
I just don't see how anybody thinks Rift "improves" on anything - it's a small themepark game with a VERY linear quest line, basically no matter what race you choose you get the same boring quest area. People tell you that "you can level through PvP or Rifts!" - yeah, right. So you've added 4 boring warfronts (only 1 until level 20) to my leveling process, and a "dynamic Rift" system that basically consists of dozens of people zerging the rifts utilizing absolutely no strategy; just numbers, to get them to "close"...
Um, Warhammer Online did this better with their PQ system. Sorry.
I don't know, I still say that this game is going to go exactly the same way Aion and WAR did but I don't even think the hype will last for Rift as long as it did for WAR.
We'll see if anyone is even talking about this game after SW:TOR and/or GW2 come out. I was bored stiff, myself. It seems that though "you're not in Azeroth anymore" you might find yourself wishing that you were...
I don't know, I still say that this game is going to go exactly the same way Aion and WAR did but I don't even think the hype will last for Rift as long as it did for WAR.
...
Allow me one small comment here. The "hype" generated for Rift is mostly due to gamers like yourself that played the beta and liked the game a lot. The hype generated for WAR was due to their developers being cocky and tooting on all media and blog how awesome they were and how their game is a killer. Quite the difference don't you think?
I respect you dislike the game. You did the smart thing though and joined the beta and saw for yourself that you didn't like the game. You know what else is different from WAR? The majority of the people who claim that Rift is same old and boring have tested the game themselves and made their mind before purchase. Thus, while their opinion is valid, it also shows that Trion (Rift developers) took the extra step and made sure that the people who bought the game would only be those who would actually enjoy it. It should help making retention rates compared to than other games released.
After reading all the negative reviews about the game (dull, unimaginative, etc.), I decided "screw that" and bought it anyway.
Admittedly, with WAR dead, I was desperately hoping for a new pvp game. I had Rift beta access, didn't bother playing, and as a result wasted $50 bucks.
To make it short, I find the game incredibly unfun. It is, in fact, the most boring game I have played in a long long time. Here's why:
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these. Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs.
Graphics: I could tolerate WAR's graphics, which says a lot. Why people say this game looks amazing is beyond me. Even on ultra the world seems incredibly dull, with little detail to it. However, cities are the noteworthy exception. Aside from that, it was so bad, I actually felt excited when I saw a bunny hopping around. Obviously, the developers didn't waste time adding fluff like wildlife, flowers or shrubbery. Mountains with low poly textures, mobs that are absolutely hideous, way too much gray/brown/dark green - it's depressing.
Combat: I only leveled a cleric up to 30. That being said, I found the skills lackluster and the animations (with the exception of some Warden heals) not worth mentioning. Most importantly, in order to kill mobs you end up pressing the same 3 buttons over and over. Very fun! To spice it up, you can get the ugliest fairy yet to be shown in a video game, to heal and dps with you! If I remember correctly the "pet" heals you for 20 pts every few seconds, while drawing aggro from mobs at the other end of the map. Almost everybody uses a pet for leveling, regardless of class. So you'll see 1000000000000 boars, undead knights, or fairies following players around. Why is that? Because the moment you attack one mob, you draw aggro from at least two others. It's your pet's job to tank them, unless it's a fairy. Then you'll just die.
PvP: = The only reason I play online games. Well, in Rift there are warfronts, which will make Nordenwatch or Arathi Basin look like the apex of entertaining game design. Again, I only made it to 30, but to my knowledge only 4 different warfronts exist. Anyway, all can be summed up as either capture the flag or hold stupid relic for points. No worries, it gets old quickly. On the bright side, if you do enough warfronts, you can buy pvp gear, which is always a good thing for us non-raiders.
That leaves world pvp. Well, during head start everybody and their mom power-leveled, so I didn't experience much of that. I assume, it's going to be fine, as long as Rift can retain its subscriber base. Longevity, however, is questionable without rvr objectives.
Rifts: Every 5-10 minutes a tentacle thing appears in the sky and spawns an army of mobs that will invade your quest hub. Your job is it then to dps them down, heal the unlucky players who are getting mowed over, and of course, die a lot. After the 10th rift, it became quite tedious.
Soul System: Switching between specs out of combat is a nice idea. Still doesn't make the abilities you get for each spec more interesting.
Spawn Rates: Another fun timesink. Since there are so many players, by the time you want to kill your named mob, or gather whatever item you need, it will be gone. Then you can prepare yourself for 5 minutes of doing nothing while it respawns. Hopefully, you'll be quick enough to click it first or you'll have to wait again. Better frantically invite every player in the area to your group and hope if one clicks it, it will count for you too.
Queues: Well, the servers with pvp guilds worth playing against have 1-4 hour queues, each and every time you try to log in. For some reason, people find the game so enjoyable they are willing to put up with that. More power to them.
Obviously, all the reasons why I am underwhelmed with Rift are subjective. But I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game.
I fully expect to be flamed for this
Not only do I not have a flame for ya, I think you're spot on. Rift is... well, it's just boring. I played in beta, got a couple toons into the 20's (just *casual* playing in beta duo'ing with my wife, mind you) and the content had us missing Azeroth a great deal.
The "warfronts" in Rift are a joke. I'd rather run Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin - they take longer to complete, seem to require more strategy, and are just... well, more fun. I used to play Warhammer Online, too, and maybe I just expect more from my PvP in a game now. The scenarios in Warhammer were better than the warfronts in Rift, and Warhammer is a game that was released years ago.
I just don't see how anybody thinks Rift "improves" on anything - it's a small themepark game with a VERY linear quest line, basically no matter what race you choose you get the same boring quest area. People tell you that "you can level through PvP or Rifts!" - yeah, right. So you've added 4 boring warfronts (only 1 until level 20) to my leveling process, and a "dynamic Rift" system that basically consists of dozens of people zerging the rifts utilizing absolutely no strategy; just numbers, to get them to "close"...
Um, Warhammer Online did this better with their PQ system. Sorry.
I don't know, I still say that this game is going to go exactly the same way Aion and WAR did but I don't even think the hype will last for Rift as long as it did for WAR.
We'll see if anyone is even talking about this game after SW:TOR and/or GW2 come out. I was bored stiff, myself. It seems that though "you're not in Azeroth anymore" you might find yourself wishing that you were...
Not even sure I can respond to this thread, or this post, or the OP. You're actually agreeing with him when he has so many blatent fabrications is just amazing in itself. And then you say the WAR scenerios and WoW battelgrounds are more fun, yet for pretty much the first 2 in Rift they are identical. Black Garden is a murder ball almost identical to Mourkain's Temple in WAR. Right down to the points per tick, timing on the ticks, and points gained for your team at the end of each match. Even thier victory/match end screen is pretty much identical. Codex is a near knockoff to AB in WoW. 4 nodes to capture, all equally spaced, 1 worth more than the other 3, match ends with the same point total and same time limit. It even has the same capture clocks on the nodes.
Maybe you agree with this OP because you didnt play Rift either (and I do mean play the game, not log in for 15 minutes and say you hate it)? I'm gonna call BS on both of you I think. Just too much stuff in both your posts that can be nothing but outright lies. One thing I can say though, both of you make no attempt to hide you're WoW fanbois and Rift haters. Both posts are full of that proof. But dont feel bad, there are at least 2 others in this thread who are right on board with both of you. And yes, thier posts are total BS too. Notice I didnt say your opinions were false because your opinions are fine, your lies are just...well lies.
Yay another post from someone who claims never to have played beta but decides to buy the game. Then regrets it afterwards and then decides to warn the world of making the same mistake he did after only a couple days of game play. Thanks for your concern but as you can proably tell by now it seem most of the people that bought Rift are really enjoying the game.
Rift is a great mmo no doubt. If i had never played world of warcraft, i would probably give it a shot. Beta was really fun though had some epic invasions.
I played Rift from beta 5 and the first day of early start and I have to concur with the OP also. I've been playing MMO's since the early days of EQ1. I'm not going to list all the ones I've played but it's quite a few.
All I can say is, if you're enjoying Rift, then fine. I'm happy for you. I didn't. To me it seemed an awful lot like "been there, done that" in just about every area, except for the multiple souls system which is probably the most unique characteristic of the game.
But I"m going to reiturate a couple of the things that I found irritating.
The agro range was ridiculous. As he said, you need a pet to tank because in almost every case you're going to end up fighting multiple mobs.
The respawn rate for trash mobs was way beyond fast. We're talking less than 5 seconds. So, you can kill a mob to get to an objective and before you can loot him, he's respawning. Yet, if the mob is a quest objective, it will take up to 5 minutes for him to respawn. Sometimes more. This may be a function of the newbie area and the need to keep providing cannon fodder for staring players, but I encountered it even up to level 18.
The Rifts are exciting for about the first 5 or 10, and getting the planarites and other "badges" seemed interesting, until you realize that you only get 3 or 4 per Rift and it takes 250 - 500 to get any decent items, then suddenly we're back to the "do this dungeon 1,000 times to get enough badges to buy gear" grind. Only, it's Rifts not necessarily instances now.
Granted, the user economy wasn't really moving during beta, so there are probably other ways of getting gear. But it all just seemed like playing every other MMO with the same gameplay.
I'm not going to say Rift is a bad game, it isn't. If it's the first MMO you've ever played, you're probably going to enjoy it immensely. Perhaps, because of my experience, I'm just a little jaded and expecting too much. But from a company that boasts "We're not in Azeroth Anymore," it sure seemed lilke we hadn't traveled far from it.
After reading all the negative reviews about the game (dull, unimaginative, etc.), I decided "screw that" and bought it anyway.
Admittedly, with WAR dead, I was desperately hoping for a new pvp game. I had Rift beta access, didn't bother playing, and as a result wasted $50 bucks.
To make it short, I find the game incredibly unfun. It is, in fact, the most boring game I have played in a long long time. Here's why:
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these. Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs.
Graphics: I could tolerate WAR's graphics, which says a lot. Why people say this game looks amazing is beyond me. Even on ultra the world seems incredibly dull, with little detail to it. However, cities are the noteworthy exception. Aside from that, it was so bad, I actually felt excited when I saw a bunny hopping around. Obviously, the developers didn't waste time adding fluff like wildlife, flowers or shrubbery. Mountains with low poly textures, mobs that are absolutely hideous, way too much gray/brown/dark green - it's depressing.
Combat: I only leveled a cleric up to 30. That being said, I found the skills lackluster and the animations (with the exception of some Warden heals) not worth mentioning. Most importantly, in order to kill mobs you end up pressing the same 3 buttons over and over. Very fun! To spice it up, you can get the ugliest fairy yet to be shown in a video game, to heal and dps with you! If I remember correctly the "pet" heals you for 20 pts every few seconds, while drawing aggro from mobs at the other end of the map. Almost everybody uses a pet for leveling, regardless of class. So you'll see 1000000000000 boars, undead knights, or fairies following players around. Why is that? Because the moment you attack one mob, you draw aggro from at least two others. It's your pet's job to tank them, unless it's a fairy. Then you'll just die.
PvP: = The only reason I play online games. Well, in Rift there are warfronts, which will make Nordenwatch or Arathi Basin look like the apex of entertaining game design. Again, I only made it to 30, but to my knowledge only 4 different warfronts exist. Anyway, all can be summed up as either capture the flag or hold stupid relic for points. No worries, it gets old quickly. On the bright side, if you do enough warfronts, you can buy pvp gear, which is always a good thing for us non-raiders.
That leaves world pvp. Well, during head start everybody and their mom power-leveled, so I didn't experience much of that. I assume, it's going to be fine, as long as Rift can retain its subscriber base. Longevity, however, is questionable without rvr objectives.
Rifts: Every 5-10 minutes a tentacle thing appears in the sky and spawns an army of mobs that will invade your quest hub. Your job is it then to dps them down, heal the unlucky players who are getting mowed over, and of course, die a lot. After the 10th rift, it became quite tedious.
Soul System: Switching between specs out of combat is a nice idea. Still doesn't make the abilities you get for each spec more interesting.
Spawn Rates: Another fun timesink. Since there are so many players, by the time you want to kill your named mob, or gather whatever item you need, it will be gone. Then you can prepare yourself for 5 minutes of doing nothing while it respawns. Hopefully, you'll be quick enough to click it first or you'll have to wait again. Better frantically invite every player in the area to your group and hope if one clicks it, it will count for you too.
Queues: Well, the servers with pvp guilds worth playing against have 1-4 hour queues, each and every time you try to log in. For some reason, people find the game so enjoyable they are willing to put up with that. More power to them.
Obviously, all the reasons why I am underwhelmed with Rift are subjective. But I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game.
I fully expect to be flamed for this
I played beta and agree on every point. You are brutally FORCED to do quests right at the start. No other way to gain levels or have fun. They say it only takes 10 seconds to get to know someone. The same goes for a game too.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
I played beta and agree on every point. You are brutally FORCED to do quests right at the start. No other way to gain levels or have fun. They say it only takes 10 seconds to get to know someone. The same goes for a game too.
{Mod Edit} There're plenty of way to level in Rift, from doing rifts event, PvPing,etc....and ye olde grinding. Fun is a subjective, you may not find certain things fun but loads of other find them to be fun.
I played beta and agree on every point. You are brutally FORCED to do quests right at the start. No other way to gain levels or have fun. They say it only takes 10 seconds to get to know someone. The same goes for a game too.
{Mod edit} There're plenty of way to level in Rift, from doing rifts event, PvPing,etc....and ye olde grinding. Fun is a subjective, you may not find certain things fun but loads of other find them to be fun.
Perhaps he's just talking about the tutorial zone. You can't leave the zone until you do the quests there, that much is true. Considering that he's talking about the importance of first impression, it's easy to assume that he never made it out of the tutorial area. Pity really, but oh well. Can't please them all. Just hoping that his impressions were from the beta events and not the live game.
After reading all the negative reviews about the game (dull, unimaginative, etc.), I decided "screw that" and bought it anyway.
Admittedly, with WAR dead, I was desperately hoping for a new pvp game. I had Rift beta access, didn't bother playing, and as a result wasted $50 bucks.
To make it short, I find the game incredibly unfun. It is, in fact, the most boring game I have played in a long long time. Here's why:
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these. Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs.
Graphics: I could tolerate WAR's graphics, which says a lot. Why people say this game looks amazing is beyond me. Even on ultra the world seems incredibly dull, with little detail to it. However, cities are the noteworthy exception. Aside from that, it was so bad, I actually felt excited when I saw a bunny hopping around. Obviously, the developers didn't waste time adding fluff like wildlife, flowers or shrubbery. Mountains with low poly textures, mobs that are absolutely hideous, way too much gray/brown/dark green - it's depressing.
Combat: I only leveled a cleric up to 30. That being said, I found the skills lackluster and the animations (with the exception of some Warden heals) not worth mentioning. Most importantly, in order to kill mobs you end up pressing the same 3 buttons over and over. Very fun! To spice it up, you can get the ugliest fairy yet to be shown in a video game, to heal and dps with you! If I remember correctly the "pet" heals you for 20 pts every few seconds, while drawing aggro from mobs at the other end of the map. Almost everybody uses a pet for leveling, regardless of class. So you'll see 1000000000000 boars, undead knights, or fairies following players around. Why is that? Because the moment you attack one mob, you draw aggro from at least two others. It's your pet's job to tank them, unless it's a fairy. Then you'll just die.
PvP: = The only reason I play online games. Well, in Rift there are warfronts, which will make Nordenwatch or Arathi Basin look like the apex of entertaining game design. Again, I only made it to 30, but to my knowledge only 4 different warfronts exist. Anyway, all can be summed up as either capture the flag or hold stupid relic for points. No worries, it gets old quickly. On the bright side, if you do enough warfronts, you can buy pvp gear, which is always a good thing for us non-raiders.
That leaves world pvp. Well, during head start everybody and their mom power-leveled, so I didn't experience much of that. I assume, it's going to be fine, as long as Rift can retain its subscriber base. Longevity, however, is questionable without rvr objectives.
Rifts: Every 5-10 minutes a tentacle thing appears in the sky and spawns an army of mobs that will invade your quest hub. Your job is it then to dps them down, heal the unlucky players who are getting mowed over, and of course, die a lot. After the 10th rift, it became quite tedious.
Soul System: Switching between specs out of combat is a nice idea. Still doesn't make the abilities you get for each spec more interesting.
Spawn Rates: Another fun timesink. Since there are so many players, by the time you want to kill your named mob, or gather whatever item you need, it will be gone. Then you can prepare yourself for 5 minutes of doing nothing while it respawns. Hopefully, you'll be quick enough to click it first or you'll have to wait again. Better frantically invite every player in the area to your group and hope if one clicks it, it will count for you too.
Queues: Well, the servers with pvp guilds worth playing against have 1-4 hour queues, each and every time you try to log in. For some reason, people find the game so enjoyable they are willing to put up with that. More power to them.
Obviously, all the reasons why I am underwhelmed with Rift are subjective. But I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game.
I fully expect to be flamed for this
I played beta and agree on every point. You are brutally FORCED to do quests right at the start. No other way to gain levels or have fun. They say it only takes 10 seconds to get to know someone. The same goes for a game too.
After reading all that all I can say is "l2play bro"
Seriously.
1. If you needed a pet to kill 2-3 mobs as a Cleric then you are horrible and shouldn't be so concerned with PvP as you'd get steam rolled anyway. Cleric is incredibly easy to roll 3-5 mobs and end the fight at 100% health and mana.
2. As for being forced to do quests? IT'S A TUTORIAL! Yes, you HAVE to do quests for the first 20-30 minutes until you get out of the tutorial "instance" area but after that the only person forcing anything is YOU, Mr./Mrs. complete lack of imagination.
3. The other "points" you make about spawn times and queues have been true about EVERY major MMO release with massive population all congested in the same starter areas during a launch/pre-launch head start. Get over it.
4. You hate the questing and the Rifts? Because the Rifts get in the way of your.. questing? Somebody call the whaaaambulance. You want open world content that makes the game somewhat dynamic, but you don't want it interfering with the game when YOU have quests to turn in? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Honestly.. just go away. I'm sorry you didn't like Rift. If it's not a game for you, then don't play. But don't come here and spout your opinions as "facts" because you lack logic and perspective on a scale that can only described as EPIC. Was WoW your first MMO? I'm guessing this was your first launch/pre-launch experience. It's ok... we all have to start somewhere...
It's interesting to see how GW2's questless setup has already become the new standard even before it released for some people.
I can remember people asking whether a game had enough quests to level up and not forcing players to grind xp as quests were considered the holy grail of leveling content.
I played Rift since the very first beta with a VIP pass, I can agree with everything the OP has said. I tried to warn those of you who were not already biased beyond belief. Rift is a good concept horribly executed, and its clear its run by marketing minded people, not actual designers that know what they are doing in my opinion. Rift defines the word generic. Within 3 months it will lose a large portion of its player base...
I played Rift since the very first beta with a VIP pass, I can agree with everything the OP has said. I tried to warn those of you who were not already biased beyond belief. Rift is a good concept horribly executed, and its clear its run by marketing minded people, not actual designers that know what they are doing in my opinion. Rift defines the word generic. Within 3 months it will lose a large portion of its player base...
Just to clarify, since I wonder... You base your opinion of a game on the First beta?
I disagree fully that the game is horribly executed.. It's very well executed actually.. You just have to take it for what it is.. I don't believe I've read a post where anyone have said the the game is the dawning of a new age in MMO industry or that the game is innovative in every way.
The game takes what's out there and works on it, tweaks it, to more or less perfection (in my opinion). If someone is looking for something new rather than the old MMO-formula then one probably won't like Rift, even though the soulsystem and rifts are quite new and fresh - at least to me.
But to say it's horribly executed is a "tad" exagerated..
As for warning people after the first beta... You can't find many good games then can you? Considering what state games usually are in when it comes to the first beta-phases.
Oh come on, we all know the TRUE future of MMORPGs -
AFK macro-grinding your skills while you sleep and pray/hope no one finds the dark corner you are running into constantly so they can gank you and steal your loots FFA PvP style in a game world with 2004 graphics and 2000 design concepts.
THAT is the future!
Dynamic content, player choice, story... these are all relics of ancient grand-daddy MMOs for die-hard veterans...
Played the game from the first beta till the open beta,game is great,graphics could be beter but even if u have everything on ultra in-game does not mean you will get the graphics mentioned in game settings,consider checking the settings of you graphic card by using the utility like the ATI catalyst tool.
there is nothing wrong with the game,questing is fun and even the rifts are fun! only thing I dont like about RIFT is that Rangers CANT Tame wild beasts and they should do something about wildlife and mobs,there are too many wolves for example and not bears etc.
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these.Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs.
Not going to flame you. Your experience was your experience, and your opinion is your opinion.
I agree with the repetitive and unimaginative nature of quests being a marathon yawn-fest - in all MMOs, not just Rift. No wonder people just want to power through them. They're drivel. Though on the other hand, if hardly anyone reads them anyway, why spend development time writing up deep and interesting story arcs for them? It's kinda circular.
However, statements like the bit in orange always make me cringe a bit. Not specifically how it pertains to Rift, but MMOs in general and, the players in particular.
Statements like that are basically the key to why I think so many people find MMOs so boring. They focus on only one area of the game; questing in this case. There allegedly aren't enough quests to reach cap, so players are (again, allegedly) "forced" to do other content to make up the difference.
Incidentally... I always take issue with that word, "forced" when used in regards to gaming. For one, the entire act of playing a game is voluntary. For another, feeling you're "forced" to do someting in a game that you, ideally, should be playing because you enjoy it just seems very off to me. It's up there with the whole "subscriptions make you feel obligated to play" argument made against sub-based MMOs. The word "obligated", like the word "forced" has no place in an activity that people are - supposedly, anyway - doing because they enjoy it.
Players are, as usual, painting themselves into a corner by limiting themselves to certain activities which of course either run out eventually, or become boring. Then they blame the game/developers for it.
MMORPGs offer a variety of content with the intent that people will partake in a variety of it.. not just one or two things, at the exclusion of all else. Grinding mobs, doing rifts or warfronts.. or perhaps crafting, harvesting, socializing (heaven forbid) or even exploring are all options that the game does provide. Not finding them interseting makes them no less so. They're still options.
It's like going to a buffet that has 36 different items to choose from. A customer decides they're only going to eat the chicken items, despite the fact that there's beef, and fish, and vegetables, and so forth, to choose from as well. After a while, they find that they've run out of chicken items to choose from, and become angry that the the restaurant isn't giving them enough options to choose from. If they want something different, they're "forced" to eat something other than chicken.
The restaurant is giving them more options, many more in fact. The customer has chosen to eat only the chicken products... they aren't forced to. No one is limiting the customer but the customer them self.... and that is certainly not the restaurant's fault nor responsibility.
I see things like what you listed up there, and I see things players can do to mix up their activities, do different things, prevent any one activity from becoming stale or repetitive. Options are good things.
Should there be more quests for people who insist on doing nothing but grinding them to level cap? I suppose so. I still contend, though, that perhaps it's also a hint to, maybe, do other stuff too.
My two cents.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Well, I find the game to be quite fun. I enjoy the quests, the rifts (ok, the invasions of rifts all over the map can be a wee bit much sometimes, I'll admit), players seem friendly, pvp is active, and the world is pretty. The characters move well, and don't appear stiff or clunky, and the animations aren't annoying imo.
There are some balance issues, though they're not too severe for a not-quite-launched game, all things considered.
Your milage may vary, but I like it. It's a good game. I look forward to seeing where it goes, and expect to be playing for quite some time.
Beyond that I think the original poster is way over the top in their view of Rift. It sounds like they want a pvp focused game and were a bit upset that they didn't find it in a pve focused game that has some pvp in it. v0v
Originally posted by 5ubzer0 After reading all the negative reviews about the game (dull, unimaginative, etc.), I decided "screw that" and bought it anyway. Admittedly, with WAR dead, I was desperately hoping for a new pvp game. I had Rift beta access, didn't bother playing, and as a result wasted $50 bucks. To make it short, I find the game incredibly unfun. It is, in fact, the most boring game I have played in a long long time. Here's why:
OK, let's do this!
Quests: I am not big into lore, but I usually make an effort to read quests texts. Rift's quests on Defiant side are either A): gather X amount of parts to repair a mysterious machine for whatevever purpose; kill X mobs to prevent dangerous ritual; or C) kill/gather stuff to help NPC supply his village. At level 15, I gave up reading any of these. Oh, and there are not enough quests to get you to max level, which people currently complain in the official forums about. You'll either have to hunt rifts, do warfronts for hours, or grind mobs.
I don't even read quests anymore. They really go much faster that way. There are a few quests that you must read in order to complete, but not too many. There are also very few quests that are actually required to get your character leveled.
However, the game isn't designed around doing one activity...i.e. just questing. It's designed around doing quests, and PvP and rift hunting, etc. You don't have to do everything, but you have to do more than just one thing.
Graphics: I could tolerate WAR's graphics, which says a lot. Why people say this game looks amazing is beyond me. Even on ultra the world seems incredibly dull, with little detail to it. However, cities are the noteworthy exception. Aside from that, it was so bad, I actually felt excited when I saw a bunny hopping around. Obviously, the developers didn't waste time adding fluff like wildlife, flowers or shrubbery. Mountains with low poly textures, mobs that are absolutely hideous, way too much gray/brown/dark green - it's depressing.
You've turned something off or you're running under the 'Low Quality Renderer'. There are lots of shrubs, rocks, etc., but they depend on your settings. I can't see your settings, so I can't really say what's going on there. I had to turn off the ground clutter and world objects because my cpu is so weak.
Also, the night time view of things is terribly bland compared to the daylight. I'd prefer that 'night' last a very short period of time and most of the stuff happen during the day because that's where all the colors are. Night doesn't add any ambiance or anything like that, so I don't really see the need for too much of it.
Combat: I only leveled a cleric up to 30. That being said, I found the skills lackluster and the animations (with the exception of some Warden heals) not worth mentioning. Most importantly, in order to kill mobs you end up pressing the same 3 buttons over and over. Very fun! To spice it up, you can get the ugliest fairy yet to be shown in a video game, to heal and dps with you! If I remember correctly the "pet" heals you for 20 pts every few seconds, while drawing aggro from mobs at the other end of the map. Almost everybody uses a pet for leveling, regardless of class. So you'll see 1000000000000 boars, undead knights, or fairies following players around. Why is that? Because the moment you attack one mob, you draw aggro from at least two others. It's your pet's job to tank them, unless it's a fairy. Then you'll just die.
Everyone gets a pet if they want one. Nobody gets left out. Ditto for the same three buttons mashed. Anyone can do it. That doesn't mean that's all there is. Experiment a little bit. You can spice it up if you want to, but you have to read the tooltips on the spells and see what they do. Try out different souls and soul combinations. You'll be surprised what you can come up with.
That said, you will die in Rift. The mobs, especially the rift invaders are tough and they often come in groups. This is the whole reason you're there though...you're the ascended. The regular NPC guys are all going to die because they are not up to the task...so it's up to you. So...be a little careful when pulling mobs. That's nothing new to the mmorpg genre. They can't make it too easy.
Also, I play a Cleric too and the fairy does suck for tanking. That's not what it's for...it just heals you and looks cute. Or maybe it looks creepy, I haven't decided yet.
PvP: = The only reason I play online games. Well, in Rift there are warfronts, which will make Nordenwatch or Arathi Basin look like the apex of entertaining game design. Again, I only made it to 30, but to my knowledge only 4 different warfronts exist. Anyway, all can be summed up as either capture the flag or hold stupid relic for points. No worries, it gets old quickly. On the bright side, if you do enough warfronts, you can buy pvp gear, which is always a good thing for us non-raiders.
I'm not sure what to do with Warfronts. How do you make them interesting? I'd like to see something that gives resources or buffs to your faction. I think the saving grace for PvP will be (maybe) RvR type stuff. Trion has proven quick to make changes based on their players and a lot of people want RvR and sieges. We shall see. In the meantime, I'm playing on a PvP server and planning on taking plenty of quest hubs.
That leaves world pvp. Well, during head start everybody and their mom power-leveled, so I didn't experience much of that. I assume, it's going to be fine, as long as Rift can retain its subscriber base. Longevity, however, is questionable without rvr objectives.
Trion said they would add it if people want it. I don't know how many people really want it, but the thread ballooned up to a ridiculous number of pages pretty quickly.
Rifts: Every 5-10 minutes a tentacle thing appears in the sky and spawns an army of mobs that will invade your quest hub. Your job is it then to dps them down, heal the unlucky players who are getting mowed over, and of course, die a lot. After the 10th rift, it became quite tedious.
Um...this is kind of the point of the game. The 'every 10 minutes' thing is a bit overstated though. If that were true, I would not have gotten through nearly as many quest hubs as I did. This is part of the activities in the game, other than questing that you participate in for XP. In fact, it seems to be setup so you can rift hunt without doing most of the quests and be fine for leveling.
Don't stand in front of the invasion mobs. They are elite level mobs so let the tanks get up there. Then stand way back and hit them from a distance or heal the people getting hit.
This has, by far, been one of the best parts of the game for me. I can either participate, or just sneak by and let everyone else die. My choice. :-)
Soul System: Switching between specs out of combat is a nice idea. Still doesn't make the abilities you get for each spec more interesting.
You have to actually read all the tooltips and stuff. There is more than 'hit button, do damage', but you have to actually read the tooltips and see which talents actually work well together and which ones are designed to be used together for additional damage.
Spawn Rates: Another fun timesink. Since there are so many players, by the time you want to kill your named mob, or gather whatever item you need, it will be gone. Then you can prepare yourself for 5 minutes of doing nothing while it respawns. Hopefully, you'll be quick enough to click it first or you'll have to wait again. Better frantically invite every player in the area to your group and hope if one clicks it, it will count for you too.
This is a pain point in any mmorpg. It's one that I hate. The public groups help. It hasn't seemed nearly as bad in the early access compared to the beta though. I'm sure it'll be another pain point when the full release happens. So far, there were a total of 4 named mobs that I ran across, out of all the quests, quest mobs and rift mobs I had to kill so it wasn't that big a deal for me. I spent a few minutes, made sure I had as many people in my group as I could get and in 5 minutes or less always killed the named guy I needed.
I'd like to see them do something where the named guys are always a group thing, so as long as you hit it and did enough damage, whether you hit it first or not, you'd get credit for the kill.
Queues: Well, the servers with pvp guilds worth playing against have 1-4 hour queues, each and every time you try to log in. For some reason, people find the game so enjoyable they are willing to put up with that. More power to them.
The queues suck. Especially if you started on a lower pop server and then it got Full. Trion is going to offer server transfers, but I haven't seen any confirmed details on how that'll work yet.
Obviously, all the reasons why I am underwhelmed with Rift are subjective. But I had more fun waiting in the queue than playing the game. I fully expect to be flamed for this
Someone probably will flame you. I'm sure they have flamed you. This is MMORPG(dot)Com after all. Me, I had fun playing the game because I ended up on a server with no queue times. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Why would blizzard send an employee here to post negative things about Rifts?
It isn't like this site is filled with tons of people who play wow and might leave for rifts and blizzard is trembling at the massive amount of mmorpg.com players who might leave wow.
Why would blizzard pay someone to post on the forums here when they could have just thrown some pocket change at the website and cockblocked trion from advertising.
Beyond that I think the original poster is way over the top in their view of Rift. It sounds like they want a pvp focused game and were a bit upset that they didn't find it in a pve focused game that has some pvp in it. v0v
Blizzard did send "please come back" letters to unsubscribed accounts the exact day that RIFT head start opened.
Comments
ArcheAge is a sandbox while Rift is a themepark, you're comparing apple and orange here. EVE Online is the game you would to compare ArcheAge to.
The game is god's given gift to all gamers. That is, until it leaves the developer phase and enters open beta. Until we get there, lets keep our excitement in check, shall we?
Besides, you're comparing apples with oranges (themepark with sandbox). It's like comparing turned based strategy games with real time ones. You can do it, doesn't make much sense though.
Looking at your post I get the impression you did not even make it out of the queue.
Regards
Melmoth
ed because my Japanese PC created a long string of ?????, hehe. Fixed now.
Not only do I not have a flame for ya, I think you're spot on. Rift is... well, it's just boring. I played in beta, got a couple toons into the 20's (just *casual* playing in beta duo'ing with my wife, mind you) and the content had us missing Azeroth a great deal.
The "warfronts" in Rift are a joke. I'd rather run Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin - they take longer to complete, seem to require more strategy, and are just... well, more fun. I used to play Warhammer Online, too, and maybe I just expect more from my PvP in a game now. The scenarios in Warhammer were better than the warfronts in Rift, and Warhammer is a game that was released years ago.
I just don't see how anybody thinks Rift "improves" on anything - it's a small themepark game with a VERY linear quest line, basically no matter what race you choose you get the same boring quest area. People tell you that "you can level through PvP or Rifts!" - yeah, right. So you've added 4 boring warfronts (only 1 until level 20) to my leveling process, and a "dynamic Rift" system that basically consists of dozens of people zerging the rifts utilizing absolutely no strategy; just numbers, to get them to "close"...
Um, Warhammer Online did this better with their PQ system. Sorry.
I don't know, I still say that this game is going to go exactly the same way Aion and WAR did but I don't even think the hype will last for Rift as long as it did for WAR.
We'll see if anyone is even talking about this game after SW:TOR and/or GW2 come out. I was bored stiff, myself. It seems that though "you're not in Azeroth anymore" you might find yourself wishing that you were...
Allow me one small comment here. The "hype" generated for Rift is mostly due to gamers like yourself that played the beta and liked the game a lot. The hype generated for WAR was due to their developers being cocky and tooting on all media and blog how awesome they were and how their game is a killer. Quite the difference don't you think?
I respect you dislike the game. You did the smart thing though and joined the beta and saw for yourself that you didn't like the game. You know what else is different from WAR? The majority of the people who claim that Rift is same old and boring have tested the game themselves and made their mind before purchase. Thus, while their opinion is valid, it also shows that Trion (Rift developers) took the extra step and made sure that the people who bought the game would only be those who would actually enjoy it. It should help making retention rates compared to than other games released.
Not even sure I can respond to this thread, or this post, or the OP. You're actually agreeing with him when he has so many blatent fabrications is just amazing in itself. And then you say the WAR scenerios and WoW battelgrounds are more fun, yet for pretty much the first 2 in Rift they are identical. Black Garden is a murder ball almost identical to Mourkain's Temple in WAR. Right down to the points per tick, timing on the ticks, and points gained for your team at the end of each match. Even thier victory/match end screen is pretty much identical. Codex is a near knockoff to AB in WoW. 4 nodes to capture, all equally spaced, 1 worth more than the other 3, match ends with the same point total and same time limit. It even has the same capture clocks on the nodes.
Maybe you agree with this OP because you didnt play Rift either (and I do mean play the game, not log in for 15 minutes and say you hate it)? I'm gonna call BS on both of you I think. Just too much stuff in both your posts that can be nothing but outright lies. One thing I can say though, both of you make no attempt to hide you're WoW fanbois and Rift haters. Both posts are full of that proof. But dont feel bad, there are at least 2 others in this thread who are right on board with both of you. And yes, thier posts are total BS too. Notice I didnt say your opinions were false because your opinions are fine, your lies are just...well lies.
Rift is a great mmo no doubt. If i had never played world of warcraft, i would probably give it a shot. Beta was really fun though had some epic invasions.
I played Rift from beta 5 and the first day of early start and I have to concur with the OP also. I've been playing MMO's since the early days of EQ1. I'm not going to list all the ones I've played but it's quite a few.
All I can say is, if you're enjoying Rift, then fine. I'm happy for you. I didn't. To me it seemed an awful lot like "been there, done that" in just about every area, except for the multiple souls system which is probably the most unique characteristic of the game.
But I"m going to reiturate a couple of the things that I found irritating.
The agro range was ridiculous. As he said, you need a pet to tank because in almost every case you're going to end up fighting multiple mobs.
The respawn rate for trash mobs was way beyond fast. We're talking less than 5 seconds. So, you can kill a mob to get to an objective and before you can loot him, he's respawning. Yet, if the mob is a quest objective, it will take up to 5 minutes for him to respawn. Sometimes more. This may be a function of the newbie area and the need to keep providing cannon fodder for staring players, but I encountered it even up to level 18.
The Rifts are exciting for about the first 5 or 10, and getting the planarites and other "badges" seemed interesting, until you realize that you only get 3 or 4 per Rift and it takes 250 - 500 to get any decent items, then suddenly we're back to the "do this dungeon 1,000 times to get enough badges to buy gear" grind. Only, it's Rifts not necessarily instances now.
Granted, the user economy wasn't really moving during beta, so there are probably other ways of getting gear. But it all just seemed like playing every other MMO with the same gameplay.
I'm not going to say Rift is a bad game, it isn't. If it's the first MMO you've ever played, you're probably going to enjoy it immensely. Perhaps, because of my experience, I'm just a little jaded and expecting too much. But from a company that boasts "We're not in Azeroth Anymore," it sure seemed lilke we hadn't traveled far from it.
I played beta and agree on every point. You are brutally FORCED to do quests right at the start. No other way to gain levels or have fun. They say it only takes 10 seconds to get to know someone. The same goes for a game too.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
{Mod Edit} There're plenty of way to level in Rift, from doing rifts event, PvPing,etc....and ye olde grinding. Fun is a subjective, you may not find certain things fun but loads of other find them to be fun.
Perhaps he's just talking about the tutorial zone. You can't leave the zone until you do the quests there, that much is true. Considering that he's talking about the importance of first impression, it's easy to assume that he never made it out of the tutorial area. Pity really, but oh well. Can't please them all. Just hoping that his impressions were from the beta events and not the live game.
After reading all that all I can say is "l2play bro"
Seriously.
1. If you needed a pet to kill 2-3 mobs as a Cleric then you are horrible and shouldn't be so concerned with PvP as you'd get steam rolled anyway. Cleric is incredibly easy to roll 3-5 mobs and end the fight at 100% health and mana.
2. As for being forced to do quests? IT'S A TUTORIAL! Yes, you HAVE to do quests for the first 20-30 minutes until you get out of the tutorial "instance" area but after that the only person forcing anything is YOU, Mr./Mrs. complete lack of imagination.
3. The other "points" you make about spawn times and queues have been true about EVERY major MMO release with massive population all congested in the same starter areas during a launch/pre-launch head start. Get over it.
4. You hate the questing and the Rifts? Because the Rifts get in the way of your.. questing? Somebody call the whaaaambulance. You want open world content that makes the game somewhat dynamic, but you don't want it interfering with the game when YOU have quests to turn in? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Honestly.. just go away. I'm sorry you didn't like Rift. If it's not a game for you, then don't play. But don't come here and spout your opinions as "facts" because you lack logic and perspective on a scale that can only described as EPIC. Was WoW your first MMO? I'm guessing this was your first launch/pre-launch experience. It's ok... we all have to start somewhere...
Oh dear ... like waterboarding forced?
It's interesting to see how GW2's questless setup has already become the new standard even before it released for some people.
I can remember people asking whether a game had enough quests to level up and not forcing players to grind xp as quests were considered the holy grail of leveling content.
My brand new bloggity blog.
I played Rift since the very first beta with a VIP pass, I can agree with everything the OP has said. I tried to warn those of you who were not already biased beyond belief. Rift is a good concept horribly executed, and its clear its run by marketing minded people, not actual designers that know what they are doing in my opinion. Rift defines the word generic. Within 3 months it will lose a large portion of its player base...
Just to clarify, since I wonder... You base your opinion of a game on the First beta?
I disagree fully that the game is horribly executed.. It's very well executed actually.. You just have to take it for what it is.. I don't believe I've read a post where anyone have said the the game is the dawning of a new age in MMO industry or that the game is innovative in every way.
The game takes what's out there and works on it, tweaks it, to more or less perfection (in my opinion). If someone is looking for something new rather than the old MMO-formula then one probably won't like Rift, even though the soulsystem and rifts are quite new and fresh - at least to me.
But to say it's horribly executed is a "tad" exagerated..
As for warning people after the first beta... You can't find many good games then can you? Considering what state games usually are in when it comes to the first beta-phases.
Oh come on, we all know the TRUE future of MMORPGs -
AFK macro-grinding your skills while you sleep and pray/hope no one finds the dark corner you are running into constantly so they can gank you and steal your loots FFA PvP style in a game world with 2004 graphics and 2000 design concepts.
THAT is the future!
Dynamic content, player choice, story... these are all relics of ancient grand-daddy MMOs for die-hard veterans...
Played the game from the first beta till the open beta,game is great,graphics could be beter but even if u have everything on ultra in-game does not mean you will get the graphics mentioned in game settings,consider checking the settings of you graphic card by using the utility like the ATI catalyst tool.
there is nothing wrong with the game,questing is fun and even the rifts are fun! only thing I dont like about RIFT is that Rangers CANT Tame wild beasts and they should do something about wildlife and mobs,there are too many wolves for example and not bears etc.
Not going to flame you. Your experience was your experience, and your opinion is your opinion.
I agree with the repetitive and unimaginative nature of quests being a marathon yawn-fest - in all MMOs, not just Rift. No wonder people just want to power through them. They're drivel. Though on the other hand, if hardly anyone reads them anyway, why spend development time writing up deep and interesting story arcs for them? It's kinda circular.
However, statements like the bit in orange always make me cringe a bit. Not specifically how it pertains to Rift, but MMOs in general and, the players in particular.
Statements like that are basically the key to why I think so many people find MMOs so boring. They focus on only one area of the game; questing in this case. There allegedly aren't enough quests to reach cap, so players are (again, allegedly) "forced" to do other content to make up the difference.
Incidentally... I always take issue with that word, "forced" when used in regards to gaming. For one, the entire act of playing a game is voluntary. For another, feeling you're "forced" to do someting in a game that you, ideally, should be playing because you enjoy it just seems very off to me. It's up there with the whole "subscriptions make you feel obligated to play" argument made against sub-based MMOs. The word "obligated", like the word "forced" has no place in an activity that people are - supposedly, anyway - doing because they enjoy it.
Players are, as usual, painting themselves into a corner by limiting themselves to certain activities which of course either run out eventually, or become boring. Then they blame the game/developers for it.
MMORPGs offer a variety of content with the intent that people will partake in a variety of it.. not just one or two things, at the exclusion of all else. Grinding mobs, doing rifts or warfronts.. or perhaps crafting, harvesting, socializing (heaven forbid) or even exploring are all options that the game does provide. Not finding them interseting makes them no less so. They're still options.
It's like going to a buffet that has 36 different items to choose from. A customer decides they're only going to eat the chicken items, despite the fact that there's beef, and fish, and vegetables, and so forth, to choose from as well. After a while, they find that they've run out of chicken items to choose from, and become angry that the the restaurant isn't giving them enough options to choose from. If they want something different, they're "forced" to eat something other than chicken.
The restaurant is giving them more options, many more in fact. The customer has chosen to eat only the chicken products... they aren't forced to. No one is limiting the customer but the customer them self.... and that is certainly not the restaurant's fault nor responsibility.
I see things like what you listed up there, and I see things players can do to mix up their activities, do different things, prevent any one activity from becoming stale or repetitive. Options are good things.
Should there be more quests for people who insist on doing nothing but grinding them to level cap? I suppose so. I still contend, though, that perhaps it's also a hint to, maybe, do other stuff too.
My two cents.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Well, I find the game to be quite fun. I enjoy the quests, the rifts (ok, the invasions of rifts all over the map can be a wee bit much sometimes, I'll admit), players seem friendly, pvp is active, and the world is pretty. The characters move well, and don't appear stiff or clunky, and the animations aren't annoying imo.
There are some balance issues, though they're not too severe for a not-quite-launched game, all things considered.
Your milage may vary, but I like it. It's a good game. I look forward to seeing where it goes, and expect to be playing for quite some time.
{mod edit}
Beyond that I think the original poster is way over the top in their view of Rift. It sounds like they want a pvp focused game and were a bit upset that they didn't find it in a pve focused game that has some pvp in it. v0v
I don't even read quests anymore. They really go much faster that way. There are a few quests that you must read in order to complete, but not too many. There are also very few quests that are actually required to get your character leveled.
However, the game isn't designed around doing one activity...i.e. just questing. It's designed around doing quests, and PvP and rift hunting, etc. You don't have to do everything, but you have to do more than just one thing.
You've turned something off or you're running under the 'Low Quality Renderer'. There are lots of shrubs, rocks, etc., but they depend on your settings. I can't see your settings, so I can't really say what's going on there. I had to turn off the ground clutter and world objects because my cpu is so weak.
Also, the night time view of things is terribly bland compared to the daylight. I'd prefer that 'night' last a very short period of time and most of the stuff happen during the day because that's where all the colors are. Night doesn't add any ambiance or anything like that, so I don't really see the need for too much of it.
Everyone gets a pet if they want one. Nobody gets left out. Ditto for the same three buttons mashed. Anyone can do it. That doesn't mean that's all there is. Experiment a little bit. You can spice it up if you want to, but you have to read the tooltips on the spells and see what they do. Try out different souls and soul combinations. You'll be surprised what you can come up with.
That said, you will die in Rift. The mobs, especially the rift invaders are tough and they often come in groups. This is the whole reason you're there though...you're the ascended. The regular NPC guys are all going to die because they are not up to the task...so it's up to you. So...be a little careful when pulling mobs. That's nothing new to the mmorpg genre. They can't make it too easy.
Also, I play a Cleric too and the fairy does suck for tanking. That's not what it's for...it just heals you and looks cute. Or maybe it looks creepy, I haven't decided yet.
I'm not sure what to do with Warfronts. How do you make them interesting? I'd like to see something that gives resources or buffs to your faction. I think the saving grace for PvP will be (maybe) RvR type stuff. Trion has proven quick to make changes based on their players and a lot of people want RvR and sieges. We shall see. In the meantime, I'm playing on a PvP server and planning on taking plenty of quest hubs.
Trion said they would add it if people want it. I don't know how many people really want it, but the thread ballooned up to a ridiculous number of pages pretty quickly.
Um...this is kind of the point of the game. The 'every 10 minutes' thing is a bit overstated though. If that were true, I would not have gotten through nearly as many quest hubs as I did. This is part of the activities in the game, other than questing that you participate in for XP. In fact, it seems to be setup so you can rift hunt without doing most of the quests and be fine for leveling.
Don't stand in front of the invasion mobs. They are elite level mobs so let the tanks get up there. Then stand way back and hit them from a distance or heal the people getting hit.
This has, by far, been one of the best parts of the game for me. I can either participate, or just sneak by and let everyone else die. My choice. :-)
You have to actually read all the tooltips and stuff. There is more than 'hit button, do damage', but you have to actually read the tooltips and see which talents actually work well together and which ones are designed to be used together for additional damage.
This is a pain point in any mmorpg. It's one that I hate. The public groups help. It hasn't seemed nearly as bad in the early access compared to the beta though. I'm sure it'll be another pain point when the full release happens. So far, there were a total of 4 named mobs that I ran across, out of all the quests, quest mobs and rift mobs I had to kill so it wasn't that big a deal for me. I spent a few minutes, made sure I had as many people in my group as I could get and in 5 minutes or less always killed the named guy I needed.
I'd like to see them do something where the named guys are always a group thing, so as long as you hit it and did enough damage, whether you hit it first or not, you'd get credit for the kill.
The queues suck. Especially if you started on a lower pop server and then it got Full. Trion is going to offer server transfers, but I haven't seen any confirmed details on how that'll work yet.
Someone probably will flame you. I'm sure they have flamed you. This is MMORPG(dot)Com after all. Me, I had fun playing the game because I ended up on a server with no queue times. :-)
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
One post wonders make for good threads!
Blizzard did send "please come back" letters to unsubscribed accounts the exact day that RIFT head start opened.