Rift
tigersmith
Join Date: 2004-11-11 Member: 32749Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2004-11-11 Member: 32749Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Fantastic MMO (So far :))</div>Been playing this a crapload. and boy its def one of the most polished mmo launches I have ever seen.
Alot of people judge a book by its cover. When you see the UI for the game, you think WoW. And thats what turns people off. I stuck it in there until level 10 and BOY. The Zone Wide Rift Invasions are honestly the most fun I have ever had in a MMO.
The Trion Team is willing to try other things which is fanstatic. They have stated many times to the community they will try new things out. and if it does not work out. They will not keep it in the game.
Risky but its something new.
I recommend this to EVERYONE. Hands down it really surprised me.
It does have is liner quests like wow does and every other RPG on the market. But it also has Dynamic Content all over the place. Something that no MMO has really done. Try it out.
What do you guys think about it.??
Alot of people judge a book by its cover. When you see the UI for the game, you think WoW. And thats what turns people off. I stuck it in there until level 10 and BOY. The Zone Wide Rift Invasions are honestly the most fun I have ever had in a MMO.
The Trion Team is willing to try other things which is fanstatic. They have stated many times to the community they will try new things out. and if it does not work out. They will not keep it in the game.
Risky but its something new.
I recommend this to EVERYONE. Hands down it really surprised me.
It does have is liner quests like wow does and every other RPG on the market. But it also has Dynamic Content all over the place. Something that no MMO has really done. Try it out.
What do you guys think about it.??
Comments
The public quests are an improved version of Warhammer Online's. There are minor public quests all over the place, and from time to time you'll get a big zone-wide storm of public quests and marauding groups of monsters all over the place. If you liked WAR's public quests, you will like these. But start leveling now, few of these are soloable at the appropriate level, so if everyone has out-leveled you by the time you start playing, you won't be able to do many of these until you reach the endgame.
I don't recommend this to everyone. I recommend it to people who like WoW-style (and by extension, Everquest-style) gameplay but are tired of WoW itself. The games are VERY similar, but if all you need is a different setting than the ol' "for the hordelliance" crap, then Rift is the game for you. But if your grievance with WoW is of a deeper nature, if your problem is with the various conventions and structures which that game has codified, then Rift won't be your game. It's a very good WoW-clone, but it can't break free of its genetics.
:D
As for eve, i still have a 40 mil caldari character that a friend is maintaining for me, perhaps i should check out the new stuff.
I was logging onto the beta a lot but when it come down to putting money up for it I couldn't do it. It's very well polished and I think in the long run it'll do well, but it's not ground-breaking enough for me.
It's more of ye olde 1,1,1,1,2,5 and repeat combat strung together with a never-ending quest chain which I stop reading the text for about 30 missions in.
Again, it's well done and has a few new things, but after years and years of countless of MMOs I yearn for a game I can just sit down and play without having to research silly talent trees. I also don't want combat to be so darn predictable anymore and I especially don't want to follow any more silly quest chains involving reams of text. Don't get me wrong, I love reading, but that's what books are for :/
I would like to see more games that chase the ultima online model of an open world where players truly interact instead of 'grouping' to 'do quests'.
:D<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You don't play EVE, EVE plays you...
Restricts skill levelling to passive real-world time?
I love Rift so far. I played the beta and bought the collector's edition and tonight I have to raid with my stupid WoW guild and I don't want to because I'd rather be playing Rift. It takes a lot of great things from the WoW formula and the Warhammer online formula and puts in a bunch of twists of its own.
Do I think it's the perfect MMO? No. But I'm having a lot of fun with it. The invasions make the world feel really dynamic, and the open group system makes it soo easy to just jump in with someone and get things done. Gem, you should love that - instead of cliquey guilds (though those are an option), you can jump into a group with anyone on the fly =p
I love the mix and match aspect. There aren't just 8 specs, there are, like, 720 specs per class, if my math doesn't fail me. I have a necro/warlock/chloromancer that specializes in DoTs with some healing mixed in. Then I have a second role for healing and CC. You can be pure healing, pure tank, pure dps, or any combination, and it's all viable. Gonna be hell for them to balance in the endgame though.
Anyway, long story short, it's not a "WoW killer", but I don't think such a thing exists. It's a very solid and fun MMO and I intend to keep playing it until I discover the endgame is kinda crappy, which is usually what happens with me and MMO's.
More like most of the good ideas have been integrated into Wow due to its massive codebase, and the MMO market is close to saturation monopoly. As you can see in this thread, people are all like "it's good, but not different enough from WoW". WoW is so big and entrenched that you have to be amazingly niche/distinct to break people from their drug habit (i.e. EVE).
FPS games haven't devolved into this luckily, and we have nice sub-genres. You've got your arcade shooters (Warsow/UT/TF2), your "tactical" shooters (CS/ArmA), your "tactical/arcade" shooters (Halo/CoD/Battlefield), your RTS/FPS shooters, your RPG shooters. It's awesome.
But by definition, a MMO is designed to encompass ALL subgenres, thereby making a self-sufficient world. PvE + PvP + giant party events + solo + crafting + you get the idea. So, it's no surprise WoW is the hulking dominant master of the universe. Until we start to really diverge from its formula somehow.
No, that part of Eve (like most parts of Eve) sucks. AND has nothing to do with open world player-driven conflict, which is specifically what I was talking about.
<!--quoteo(post=1835879:date=Mar 4 2011, 03:46 AM:name=DiscoZombie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (DiscoZombie @ Mar 4 2011, 03:46 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1835879"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Isn't saying an MMO is like WoW pretty much saying an MMO is an MMO? 90% of MMO's are like WoW, because it's a formula that works.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's the problem right there. 90% of MMOs are like WoW because it's a formula that has worked very well in two cases (Everquest, WoW). Everyone thinks that the way to success is to copy them. The track record shows that this isn't the way to success, it's the way to a huge post-launch subscriber slump and a fast descent into obscurity. As I keep saying, the game that eventually dethrones WoW will be very different from WoW.
The problem with these games is that they attract people who have burned out on WoW. The people that haven't burned out have little incentive to switch games - their friends/guildmates play WoW, and all their characters are in WoW. And the people who have burned out don't last long past the freshness of the new game. As soon as they settle into the old, familiar grind, the burnout rears its head again and they quit, because all the reasons why they quit playing WoW apply to the new game as well.
<!--quoteo(post=1835896:date=Mar 4 2011, 05:40 AM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Mar 4 2011, 05:40 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1835896"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As you can see in this thread, people are all like "it's good, but not different enough from WoW". WoW is so big and entrenched that you have to be amazingly niche/distinct to break people from their drug habit (i.e. EVE).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think that's the right conclusion to draw. I think what people mean (at least I know that's what *I* meant) isn't that they'd rather just play WoW, it's that they DON'T want to play WoW. And they don't want to play reskinned WoW either. Hence my recommendation: If you want reskinned WoW, Rift is great. But not if you want something that is different from WoW under the surface as well.
This post contains 17 instances of the word "WoW," excluding this one.
This post contains 17 instances of the word "WoW," excluding this one.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow, that's a pretty large amounts of WoW.
So are you looking forward to GW2 then Lolf?
So are you looking forward to GW2 then Lolf?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Terra and GW2 are my most anticipated MMOs right now, yes.
So are you looking forward to GW2 then Lolf?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yep. Although ultimately GW1 fell sorta flat in the PvE department, I like the limited skillbar of that game. Keeps the interface simple, clean and intuitive, and adds a sort of "deckbuilding" to the game. And GW2 is going to make improvements in almost every area where the first one fell short. <b>If</b> they can keep what they promise (and they do promise an awful lot) it is shaping up to be a stellar game. IF THEY EVER RELEASE IT GODDAMMIT.
You didn't see gandalf go "right, is everyone in the group? no? Hurry up Borrimir. Legoalas has gone to the toilet? gahhh, we'l have to wait for him."
Groups in the MMO sense are too artificial for me. I want to just play alongside other players instead of trying to 'match quests' with random people or whatever. I want a world where our interests are shared because they're in the same world, they're right in front of us and they have consequences that won't just be reset in an hour's time :p
All that said, I'm still dying to see Guild Wars 2, Tera Online and Blade & Soul. I'm not waiting for the 'perfect game' here, I'm willing to see things not meet my ridiculous standards, but Rift, while fun, wasn't a step far enough from the forumula I'm ever so bored of and I was already bored of it before WoW came along :p
One thing that WoW HAS pioneered that I dsilike is the idea of playing the entire game as a series of linear quests. If I want to be funnelled down a preset story corridor I've got plenty of singleplayer and coop games for that and in all honesty, they do a better job of it :3
I got into the MMO genre for interaction and freedom and they've been hard to find and growing rarer by the day.
The invasions in Rift are my favourite part but I don't feel any real consequence to them: Oh noes, the NPCs are dead for an hour. Worst of all is that there's not a lot you can do as an individual in them as most mobs are massive ganking squads headed for the city. On your own you die so quick you barely have time to make a dent and I don't particularly like that aspect of it. When you do group up it's just a giant cluster of people and monsters standing around as per most MMO combat until people fall over. Don't get me wrong, I had more fun than this makes it sound like but it's shallow and short-lived and what I type out here is the 'aftertaste' I get once the novelty wears off :p
People WILL enjoy Rift and I think they're perfectly justified in doing so, I'm just a bit jaded after playing these kinds of games over a wider array of games and for longer than most. I really want to see the genre evolve and go in better/new directions :3
I've played far too much WoW to play another MMO that's "a lot like WoW". (Surprised at the talent trees being so alike.)
I want to try <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM3v3I8Nrqs" target="_blank">TERA Online.</a>
It's that we were promised a live and vibrant world that we could quest in and share in and it would be amazing just for our story (cursed Star Wars Galaxy).
Screw balance or how the hell they would manage it for just you.
I don't agree in the slightest. RPGs are a genre too yet not all are grindy or have wildly inanane or even similar combat. Compare the snoozefest of Final Fantasy Combat to the thrilling systems of Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile, Tales series, Demon Souls or Resonance of Fate. They're all unique and unlike each other yet occupy the same genre (though maybe Demon souls is classed as an action game rather than an RPG? I really don't care :p ) The latter batch of the example also kept me happily playing the whole way as their combat systems were truly fun to engage in.
Also, you get considerably less complaints about 'grind' or 'repetition' when it comes to FPS games because the repeated activity is enjoyable within itself, unlike 1,1,2,4-style MMO combat which has no real depth or longevity without piling on new abilities to distract you with more novelty :p
Games like EVE demonstrate quite aptly that players themselves are a constantly changing and interesting form of content when exploited correctly, but in fair-ground style games like WoW true player interaction is never allowed for fear of griefing and whatnot. Take this forum for another example... all we do is type words, it's inherently repetitive yet because we actually interact with others through this and the points of view we exchange are interesting it doesn't really get stale over the short time frame of just a year :3
I don't think Rifts is a 'wow clone' but it definitely has strong influences from both World of Warcraft and Warhammer online. That alone isn't going to kill a game for me, as I already mentioned I enjoyed the beta, but the ideas have to fall further from those trees to really be worth a long term investment from me personally now. I can totally understand if others play it for a year or more, but that's what's fun about humanity; we're not all the same :3
I've played this game before, same as I'd already played WoW before it came out... they're all iterations on a blend of MMO that doesn't appeal to me and I overall find somewhat shallow, but again most haven't wasted as much of their life on these silly games as I have, so what may seem overused and/or as old as dirt to me might still retain the glimmer of novelty to others.
I'm not saying "Don't enjoy it", I'm just stating why I personally won't be playing Rift in the long run :D
Au contraire. It's not a problem that is endemic to any MMO, only to any MMO that is content-driven. This includes, sadly, almost all of them, but I think the assumption that this is a necessity is wrong. I'll let the Mittani speak for me, like so: <a href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/82378" target="_blank">http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/82378</a>
Back from reading? Alright. His prime example is of course Eve Online, and I could name all kinds of OTHER things that are wrong with that game, but for all its flaws it does some things right too. And I refuse to believe that Eve's advantages can't be incorporated into better games without dragging all the flaws along.
Back from reading? Alright. His prime example is of course Eve Online, and I could name all kinds of OTHER things that are wrong with that game, but for all its flaws it does some things right too. And I refuse to believe that Eve's advantages can't be incorporated into better games without dragging all the flaws along.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I would love that kind of MMO in any setting. I love ultima, played it for several years, first on the original, moved to free shards later on. I tried EVE once, but the initial learning curve is just so heavy, without clan support.
I don't think player made 'faction's per say are necessary, nor even PvP (though it can help). To give an example, one game I used to follow the development of rabidly was a really out there game called "Trials of Ascension" The people making it clearly had a direction they wanted to go in and it was a fairly untamed wilderness that few had explored before. Sadly they never found a publisher and so it get canned :/
In Trials of ascension, to be a priest you had to follow the lifestyle of a god of your choosing. For example, if you followed the god of balance and helped out a 'winning side' or if you followed the goddess of nature and randomly killed animals, you'd earn some black marks from your god. Deviate from the god's teachings too much and you'd be stripped of your religious powers. The best part was how you advanced as well... in order to 'level up' as a priest you had to do actual priest work... converting people to your religion, building altars and following the principals of your god (e.g. if you followed the goddess of mercy, rezzing people would advance you) and most interestingly of all was the fact that only one player could be the most powerful member of their religion: the pope. How do you become pope? Simple... you have to be voted it by fellow followers of your religion :3
You'll note that there's some really interesting stuff in there and not only does it not involve PvP necessarily but most doesn't even involve combat :p
There's a wealth of interesting and engaging ideas out there yet to be explored in the MMO space. It'd be nice to see more games plumb those depths :D
Random players cannot be trusted to make a world fun for you. What happens in a player-driven game? People destroy your minecraft masterpieces and draw swastikas everywhere. People camp you and destroy your pod. People do anything they can to grief you. Internet ######wad theory. Also, regarding an open world without organized groups: I have never had fun in an MMO outside of an organized group or guild. Random players gank. PUGs fail. Unless the game is really easy and PvE and somehow grief-proof, I don't think most people would have fun in a game with a ton of freedom.
DiscoZombie: "people who vote with their dollars tend to agree" isn't a very good argument when there's only one item on the ballot. Everybody plays one particular kind of MMO because that is virtually all there is, which leads to all the developers copying it, which leads to that type being all there is. That doesn't demonstrate that there are no viable alternatives, it merely demonstrates that nobody is making any alternatives available. The reason nobody eats pink/purple-striped m&ms isn't that nobody likes them, it's that they don't exist.
I'd eat pink/purple-striped m&ms.
Multiplayer Minecraft is a poor example, being designed without griefers in mind, and therefore being highly vulnerable to them. The response has been for players to band together on whitelisted servers, keeping out undesirables. I am sure there'd be players willing to open up their servers for some kind of player conflict if there were any semblance of fairness to it, but Minecraft isn't designed for PvP and as a result the game mechanics heavily "favour" a determined griefer over "defenders" trying to stop him.
Eve is a good example, but poorly presented by you, no offense intended. Eve Online has "safe" areas where you cannot be killed wantonly, as well as larger semi-safe areas where you can be killed wantonly by a determined attacker but they will still suffer consequences (and you can even survive the attack and reap the spoils off your attacker's expanding debris field if you are willing to make the smallest concessions for the sake of survivability).
Outside these safe areas it's open season on everyone, and the response has been for players to band together for mutual protection. You'll notice that there's a pattern here - adversity causes people to group up and cooperate. There's the organized group you want, too, and there's ample opportunity for bonding through shared hardship, opposition and triumph.
But it doesn't have to be a dog-eat-dog world. A game doesn't have to copy Eve Online, flaws and all, to be an open-world player-driven sandbox. I don't have all the answers (I'll gladly sit down and give this the many, many hours of thought it needs if someone will pay me to be a developer), but there's unrealized potential that nobody even attempts to tap into. And to quote the article we read together earlier:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There are a number of sandbox games that people would murder to be able to play - in a cyberpunk setting, in a post-apocalyptic setting. Even the traditional swords and sorcery fantasy setting hasn't been successfully done in a sandbox style since Ultima Online. Someone make these games, damn it; you won't be able to hit WoW-level profits, but if you try to beat WoW you'll just fail anyway. You won't make quick riches and see huge initial numbers, but you'll get grow slowly and steadily - and you won't have a tenth of the initial capital outlay of a TOR, STO or WoW. And if there's anything that the financial hilarity in the United States has taught us recently, it's that secure, stable growth trumps attempts at making quick profits any day.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, you won't make everyone stop playing WoW or its latest clone. But you'll offer an alternative, and I think people are waiting for that. You even get the chance to become the industry standard of your subgenre the way WoW is now. And if you fail, it's a less financially crippling failure than the hugely expensive content-fest that gets the plug pulled six months after launch.
Organised griefing is great. Once a week we do it on a minecraft server, we select "two teams" have a 6 hour build up / trap in two areas and then fight to the death! The world looks awful after though :D
I'd eat pink/purple-striped m&ms.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So games aren't created according to supply and demand? There are more player-driven alternatives. EvE, as everyone's been discussing. Planetside, second life, ultima online. All mildly successful, none with mass appeal. Everyone thinks they have the great ideas about what MMO's should be, but no one realizes how impractical they are until a developer tries to implement them. pink/purple striped m&m's would not be economically viable outside of easter time.
Until there's a smash hit player-driven open world game, I will continue to believe that people at large want content driven games, not to create their own gameplay in a player-driven game. The people who want their fun to be player-driven, play content-driven games and then role play in them. That's how they create their own player content, while enjoying the content that the developers created too.
Your appeal to supply and demand is also faulty - it's a chicken-and-egg style scenario, you can't assume that the demand always comes first. Nobody asked for World of Warcraft. I remember that on these very forums, people were turned off by the idea. Natural Selection drew in some of the rts crowd who would much rather see Blizzard make Starcraft 2 than some MMORPG. And yet many of those same people all but disappeared from the community as WoW swallowed them up. Innovation does not solely rest with the consumers - if it did, we wouldn't need game designers, we would only need developers to make what we ask of them. How many people said "man, there sure is a Minecraft-shaped hole in my life" before Minecraft suddenly popped into the collective gamer consciousness?
Also, I don't think the problems with Planetside and Eve are only tangentially related to their player-driven nature at all. Planetside was great fun when people cooperate, but they rarely do, and instead they spread out and do their own thing, spread your forces too thin, and cause death, boredom and lameness. I'm always saying how much I'd love to play EvE if I wasn't at risk of losing millions or billions I invest into my super cool space ships because people kill you for fun. Same thing with Pirates of the Burning Sea - I have a pretty big ship in that game, and I'm scared to play the game anymore because I don't want to risk losing it. I play games to unwind, not to be stressed about losing things I spend my precious leisure hours earning.
Do you have an nvidia graphics card? It seems to not like those for some reason. I've never had a crash. There's like a patch every day, hopefully one of these patches will fix that.