Rift: Planes of Telara
- Thread starter Zantox_sl
- Start date
- 3,389
- 141
Favorite part of Rift to me was the difficulty of the 5 mans at max level right at release. And it's not like we're talking anything super crazy, just a few encounters that required some coordination. I know that content difficulty caused one guild I was in to split simply because the bad players wanted to be carried through it and the good players wanted to stick to their static groups that were actually competent.
Anyway before those dungeons got nerfed I had a blast with them.
Anyway before those dungeons got nerfed I had a blast with them.
Truf. The difficulty of tier 2 dungeons was ridiculous. They weren't tuned or balanced and were damn near impossible to clear with a pug. I played from beta to that because I wasn't about to blow some dude to get into a competent guild.
I came back a few times and managed to enjoy it for a few months each time. The time before I came back for SL, I got into a very good guild that could EZ mode HK and make worth while tries on ID when it first came out. Got a few legendaries and then couldn't be buggered to log in a week after BiS'ing my cleric and warrior out. SL was fun until they "fixed" defiler and forgot they had a warrior calling.
Trion had 2/3 of what it takes to make a compelling and nuanced MMO. The graphics on max are a beaut. Having to roll only 4 toons to have er'thing. Switching holy trinity roles on the fly (OOC). It's a shame they diluted what was shaping up to be a very unique game in Heroes of Telara.
Where is the amalgam of WAR gfx & PQ, DAoC 3 faction/RvR abilities, WoW breadth, UI functionality & combat responsiveness, Conan titties & gore and finally, EQ's wondrous mysticism?
You'll notice that I don't include Rift in the above because it literally did nothing new. They tried to out-Blizzard Blizzard.
Hrmm, +1 Sad.
3 main reasons I moved on from Rift very quickly:
1) It felt like they were copying WoW, and thus very likely to do the "level cap increase, all your gear is now shit!!" bullshit that made it easy to leave WoW.
2) Souls felt way too similar to classes with the ability to spec. I like to invest in one character, so anything that involves rerolling makes me less interested.
3) Combat didn't seem terribly fun, and felt like a less polished version of WoW. The fact that tier 2 dungeons at release took a long time and weren't very much fun didn't help either.
I'm not sure I buy the "people don't play games as long" thing either. I've been playing Eve fairly consistently (with intermittent breaks) for 4 years. One key difference is that Eve doesn't tell me that everything I previously had is worthless, please fuck off when an expansion hits. Factions are also pretty awful. Player defined factions make sense, arbitrary ones have never added anything to any game I can remember playing unless it was a choice and you could switch via some in game method (aka not insert 25$ here).
Two things drove me from Rift after being the MT for a top 10 guild: PVP was shit and they had no idea how to deal with rogue tanks for HK. Open world PVP quests were just people farming/camping others to get their dailies done, which ultimately was just a zerg fest. Instanced PVP was pretty crap as well.
Their class designers really didn't know what they were doing, either. The ping-pong of OP-UP, not understanding how the souls work together, and not balancing the various classes to being useful. First it was Cleric tanks that got shit on, then warriors weren't super useful either, then rogues ... all because they couldn't figure out how to add a single multiplier to an ability (honestly, if they had just added a physical damage mitigation multiplier for non-players to Rift Barrier / Shield, rogues would have been fine and balanced). Instead, we ended up with rogues that would get 2 shot buy bosses that would tickle vastly less geared warriors, cleric that couldn't hold aggro or warrior (earlier) that would get wrecked by spell damage. Honestly, 20 minutes with any competent player could have pointed out the flaws. It was the same for the non-tank types too. At the end of the day, lack of QA/QC + shitty class devs made the grinds not worth it.
Their class designers really didn't know what they were doing, either. The ping-pong of OP-UP, not understanding how the souls work together, and not balancing the various classes to being useful. First it was Cleric tanks that got shit on, then warriors weren't super useful either, then rogues ... all because they couldn't figure out how to add a single multiplier to an ability (honestly, if they had just added a physical damage mitigation multiplier for non-players to Rift Barrier / Shield, rogues would have been fine and balanced). Instead, we ended up with rogues that would get 2 shot buy bosses that would tickle vastly less geared warriors, cleric that couldn't hold aggro or warrior (earlier) that would get wrecked by spell damage. Honestly, 20 minutes with any competent player could have pointed out the flaws. It was the same for the non-tank types too. At the end of the day, lack of QA/QC + shitty class devs made the grinds not worth it.
I think they made a huge mistake with the expansion when it came to adding more tiers to the souls. Instead of building out horizontally, they build up vertically. With the system they made, any time you have to go 60pts or 50pts into a standard build, it seems like a waste. It's more interesting when you have builds with points spreadout. The sweet spot of any soul should be right in the middle. Just my opinion though.
But yeah, class balance was ugly. The fact they had bards the way they were for that long is just a travesty. Fucking travesty.
But yeah, class balance was ugly. The fact they had bards the way they were for that long is just a travesty. Fucking travesty.
Class balance matters a whole lot more when the content is hard, and not alot otherwise. The point where people go from being annoyed about class balance to quiting the game over it is when they are forced to sit on a raid or feel like they are useless and dragging the team down. Early wow and EQ both had terrible balance, some classes were totally worthless in practical terms, but no one cared cause you had raid space to bring a really large group and the content wasn't so hard that having 5 rangers doing terribad dps was gonna break you.
If that is really true about Hartsman, and he was the guy who came in and made all those bad changes then that is pretty sad. I don't have that high of an opinion on him as some people but I always thought he was competent. He gets more credit for what he did with EQ2 than he deserves tho. But if it was just dev concensus then ya is it really surprising? It was obvious since beta that trion was full of timid fucks who wanted to make a wow clone and often would copy wow with no idea why wow even did what they did.
If that is really true about Hartsman, and he was the guy who came in and made all those bad changes then that is pretty sad. I don't have that high of an opinion on him as some people but I always thought he was competent. He gets more credit for what he did with EQ2 than he deserves tho. But if it was just dev concensus then ya is it really surprising? It was obvious since beta that trion was full of timid fucks who wanted to make a wow clone and often would copy wow with no idea why wow even did what they did.
I wouldn't go that negative on Scott, he probably had to deal with a lot of crap coming into the Rift situation. I'm just disappointed on the direction they took with the tech they had.
For example, in beta, they ramped up zone events where you had millions of invasions and the map was full of those arrows etc. Each invasion rained down experience and loot. Then they toned it all down. Zone invasions were less intense, loot was backed up so all you got was shit you vendored or trashed. That should should of been raining down loot like Diablo.
Then the zone invasions and stuff happened less often etc. It was my opinion that these events should almost ALWAYS be going on. But they didn't want to disturb people all the time that just wanted to quest all day. Meh.
Zone events/invasions/rifts should of been the primary content that you consume to level up and gear up in. Quests and dungeons should of been secondary. But they chose the reverse.
Even in the end game, raids (HK can suck my dick) and experts should of taken a second step to developing an interesting endgame based on the Rift/Dynamic content engine. Instead people just ran them randomly for inscribed sourcestones or to get stones to fill your source engines with.
Hell, why not create instances (so you can tailor the experience better) where you spawned rift invasion maps that scaled to your guild size so you can bring in groups of 40-60 people.
Anyway. That is in the past.
For example, in beta, they ramped up zone events where you had millions of invasions and the map was full of those arrows etc. Each invasion rained down experience and loot. Then they toned it all down. Zone invasions were less intense, loot was backed up so all you got was shit you vendored or trashed. That should should of been raining down loot like Diablo.
Then the zone invasions and stuff happened less often etc. It was my opinion that these events should almost ALWAYS be going on. But they didn't want to disturb people all the time that just wanted to quest all day. Meh.
Zone events/invasions/rifts should of been the primary content that you consume to level up and gear up in. Quests and dungeons should of been secondary. But they chose the reverse.
Even in the end game, raids (HK can suck my dick) and experts should of taken a second step to developing an interesting endgame based on the Rift/Dynamic content engine. Instead people just ran them randomly for inscribed sourcestones or to get stones to fill your source engines with.
Hell, why not create instances (so you can tailor the experience better) where you spawned rift invasion maps that scaled to your guild size so you can bring in groups of 40-60 people.
Anyway. That is in the past.
I agree with your said stuff, but here's the thing; it all could be in Rift's future. The tech, the potential, is all there...
Trion won't divulge how well or not Rift is doing, but by most accounts and observations, its starting to struggle and breathe a bit heavily.
All it would take is the right producer, and of course the monetary resources, to mold the game back to its original vision. They've already done away with the hard factions which is a good start. Put some developers to work on making the primary world content dynamic again and I'd bet Rift gets a fresh infusion of new life (and subs).
shabushabu
Molten Core Raider
- 1,408
- 185
Yep, i remember in beta we were pleading with Trion on the boards to keep the difficulty... everyone loved it. but they nerfed the crap out of em and made them boring. That said, the expert modes ( or whatever they called them ) were better, but honestly those should have been the original dungeons... that rehashing content in a game ( at release ) with not that much content coupled with a blink of an eye leveling curve, turned rift into a lobby game pretty much... damn shame
Tearofsoul
Ancient MMO noob
- 1,791
- 1,256
Honestly, I would be fine with how zone events are now if there was actually a threat of losing and there was more randomness involved. Right now they are utterly mindless: run to fixed locations on the map, kill easy mobs, get currency, rinse and repeat x 30. Throw me a curve ball once-in-a-while, Trion!
Ukerric
Bearded Ape
- 7,956
- 9,650
The problem is the NGE syndrome. You might want to change completely how your game works. But doing so is almost guaranteed to drive away most of the people who were still playing. And will you get back enough players?
That's a though question to ask of a company.
- 11,072
- 2,267
Answer is no, regardless. Your game has already launched a long time ago and everyone who wanted to check it out did and probably won't bother, even if you were to offer free months(which you'd need to do anyway). Plus you'd kill your remaining playerbase so even if you got a decent bunch of new people, chances are it wouldn't be worth it and most of these people might be gone by the end of the month anyway. It's not even like NGE, Rift is what 3years old or so? At this point it's pointless to try to revive it with radical changes.
Your only bet is to take all your ideas and make a new game, using the same franchise, call it Rift 2 or whatever. It's pretty much 30/70 on success rate though, even if the ideas are good people aren't going to be forgiving about small mistakes and Rift players will bitch about anything that's not the same.
I think ultimately that was one of the few decent mmos that was released these last years, but it wasn't good enough and they tried too hard to beat wow at being wow with the factions, classes, skills and raids. Not that everything was a bad idea but it just didn't work so well.
Completing the original DSM (expert mode) felt like an actual accomplishment though not one you'd like to repeat too often.
I believe only needing 4 toons to have every skill in the game was a dreadfully poor decision - given the implementation of how you obtained souls. Three weeks in and I had a lvl 50 of all four with all souls. That just blows goats and kills longevity, replayability and customer retention. I still play all the other big MMOs for a few months at a time on a random rotation because there's always something new to go back to. I haven't even considered playing Rift again because there's nothing unique or attractive about it.
Scott is unquestionably an extremely good project manager. One of - if not the - best in the business. That's what he brought to EQ2. It had been a game riddled by poor leadership, poor decision making and constantly changing goals at Corporate level. It was in such a poor state because of this that hardly any of the dev team played it at launch.
Scott brought strong leadership, which was sometimes fractious (only because of poorly defined/overlapping leadership responsibilities). What he helped to do with EQ2 was good stuff compared to what came before it but it still wasn't a great game.
Again he did a terrific job in leadership and Project Management for Trion. Rift shipped in great shape and I would imagine he had some hard decisions to make to get it to launch and I have no doubt he is such a strong person that he didn't hesitate to make cuts and curtail design decision. If I set up a dev house I would have no hesitation in appointing Scott to bring the game to launch, handling co-ordination, communication and project management.
However :
i) I am not aware of any evidence whatsoever of his creativity or competence/lack of competence on the game design side.
ii) Scott is kidding himself to an extent as are other key people in the industry when they talk about F2P vrs subscription.
I disagree with this. What folks aren't willing to commit to is yet more shallow, unremarkable WoW clones.
Some interesting replies to the article at :
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielta...re-of-mmorpgs/
Scotts view is surely tainted by his major MMO experiences :
1. Sony/EQ which has gone free to play based on the back of selling house items to female subscribers, mounts and 'Bayle' tokens which people use to pay for Mercs (though you still have to sub if you want to go past 1000 AA).
2. Rift which had enormous promise with its initial Rift system and class/soul system, which were both gutted before launch.
Scott and Trion need to look at themselves, consider that WoW still has 9 million subs and ask themselves are people unwilling to pay a sub or are they just unwilling to pay a sub for a half assed copy of what's already out there.
The class and soul system were not gutted before launch, the only differences was what levels you unlocked your soul slots. You got all souls by level 20.
You made it sound better than that :
I guess they key would be how rare they are and whether they are no drop. Though any mention of a CCG game inside a MMO gets me excited - it's one prime example of a system that would be massively popular and good for customer retention but has never been brought to market.
There are lots of ways it could have been made more interesting and engaging over a longer period, even breaking souls down into individual skills or sub sets. Making it so easy to get every soul in the game was obviously a bad decision even pre release