So what’s going on with me and Rift? I promised yesterday to share a bit more about all this, although after last night’s brouhaha over any negative Rift coverage, you’d understand if I’m a little reluctant to get near all of the fan tizzy.
Basically, during the last Rift beta event the game really started to win me over, but between posting the 2010 Flushies and other projects, this post didn’t materialize as quickly as I’d hoped.
It wasn’t just the patch improvements, like the skill soft queue (although those helped), but starting to fully explore and experience the game. I don’t think Rift gives a bad first impression, per se, although it certainly gives a familiar one — almost too familiar, which is why “meh” feelings could strike early.
During beta 3, I decided to do two things: to get off the beaten track of quests (figuring that I’ll be doing those anyway come release) and to jump into the dynamic content with both feet. These ended up being good decisions, because I became free to start looking at the world on its own terms instead of relentlessly comparing it to other MMOs.
Unless you get such tunnel vision that you’ve long since ceased to see the world around you instead of merely moving through it, Telara is lush with visuals and details that are designed to please. It all just feels lush, colorful and attractive, particularly when you stop to notice the shadows, or the critters hopping about, or the little knicknacks in the dwellings, or the way a dwarf will automatically crane her head up to look at a taller NPC when targeting him. I particularly became enchanted with the Guardian capital city of Sanctum, which has the atmosphere of a seaside resort, with waves and gulls making noise in the background and a sunny atmosphere to it all.
Many bloggers have also noted how slick the UI is, and it’s really noticeable — the icons are the right size and easily identifiable, you can tell what buffs and debuffs you have up at a second’s glance, the larger map goes transparent when you start moving, and everything’s pretty easy to move around and adjust according to your tastes.
The map gets another mention for how useful it is when it comes to the dynamic content: invasions and rifts. You’re never left stumbling around wondering where a rift might be — if you can’t see it in the sky, you can on the map, and it’ll even tell you what level the rift is so you don’t go bumbling into a level 20 one when you’re just level 9. Invasions are clearly marked with streaming arrows that show you their destination and where potential conflicts from competing invasions might occur.
And it’s this dynamic content that really started to propel Rift up from decent-but-uninspired to eyepoppingly fun in my book. In short, stuff just keeps happening in the world around you, and it’s the most natural thing to get involved instead of ignoring it (although you certainly can if you want to). Upon returning to a quest-giver, I saw a raid-type invader boss stomping into the area, and I banded together with the other couple dozen players in the region to bring it down. It took around 15 minutes of fierce combat to whittle his 500K hitpoints down, during which the boss would use what we coined “the Disney fear effect” to turn all of us into woodland critters for a few seconds.
Massive invasions are even more exciting, because it’s like the whole zone is going to crap around you, and you have tons of choices depending on what you want to do: help bring down smaller rifts? Protect the invasion destinations? Rove around with warbands? Strike back against the final boss? It really isn’t the trite public quest rehash we thought it was in beta one, because it’s constantly changing and usually on the move.
So yeah, I’m coming around on this title. I have my reservations, of course — I don’t know if fighting off invasions and rifts will become stale over time, I haven’t seen the end game content yet, and it could be too similar to other MMOs to incite long-term interest. But I know that after each beta ends, I really can’t wait until the next one, and I’ve happily pre-ordered my copy to get in on that February 24th head start.
I am so on the fence about Rift. I am reading everything on it, waiting to find that gem that will sell the whole deal. The sameness worries me, as does the specter of abandoned, and thus unwinnable, lower level PQs back in WAR. Though perhaps Rift will avoid something like battlegrounds, which drained off so much of the player base in WAR from the common world.
I too am insanely on the fence about the game. Part of me wants to give in to all of the good opinions I’ve read about the game, yet the other part is screaming in my head “ITS AION ALL OVER AGAIN”.
Decisions decisions…
Great post Syp. I can’t emphasise enough what a huge difference it makes if you just IGNORE the linear questing and go exploring. It’s a fascinating, intricate, lovingly-crafted world, full of incident and detail, but if you just run from quest-giver to quest-giver you won’t see that. So don’t!
I found that I had the most fun if I just hoovered up every available quest and then struck off into the wilderness. As you target any mob you can see if you need it for a quest, so you can just pick off what’s in your way as you wander and eventually you’ll complete something. Then you can hand it in as and when you happen across the guy who gave you the quest.
That puts YOU in control, not the NPC and not the Designer. Which is a great deal more satisfying and immersive. And in the meanwhile you can throw yourself into whatever you happen upon, be it Rifts, Invasions or PvP.
It took me three betas to get a character to 20th this way, but I enjoyed every minute of it (well, bar the awful tutorials) and by the end of the last beta I would gladly just have carried on indefinitely.
Awesome point, Bhagpuss. I, too, got a bit fatigued of the whole linear quest thing while leveling up my second character, so I simply rebelled and did what you did.
I had a lot more fun, but I was definitely disappointed that I could not have gear crafted for me that was comparable to quest rewards.
I’ve always thought that the dynamic content reminded me more of the idealized version of ORVR than PQ’s – because the invasions are NPC’s, they can be trusted to show up in appropriate numbers and not to leave immediately after the keep flips because it’s better to let the other side take back the keep so you can re-take it.
I’m going back-and-forth on Rift… I don’t really need a third MMO… On the other hand, the rifts sound really interesting. On the other hand, I keep getting WAR-like vibes from RIFT, and I didn’t care for WAR very much. But on the OTHER hand, it might be a fun diversion for a while, and maybe leveling by rifting and such would be neat.
Plus I’m a sucker for a pretty game world.
Still watching RIFT with idle curiosity… and counting my hands.
So the game is more fun if you don’t play it as designed? /boggle.
I am also on the fence, more for the reasons that Wilhelm mentions than anything else. Sure it sounds good now but how sustainable is the gameplay? Remember how smart PQ’s sounded? I’m gonna wait on this one and if you all are still playing it in 6 months I’ll give it a run.
And am I the only one who hears “dynamically created content” and doesn’t immediately picture a SWG mission to a hive of some sort. /shudder.
Oh, and a question… are you guys getting to 20th level in a couple of days? What is the level cap?
Like lots here and other blogs have said, I’m on the fence as well. I really want to like it but something just doesn’t feel right with it. I get caught up in the excitement of rift hunting and the beta ending events in Beta 2/3 and can’t wait for the next beta.
But is it only cuz its a new spin on an old concept? The more I think about it, the more I think it is just that and they really aren’t doing anything new, mindblowing or dare I say, next generific.
A rift is basically a random mob spawning in a random location of any mmo. If 3 players happen to be near, its a zerg to get the kill and credit and loot from it. How is that dynamic? If 20 players happen to be there, sure, more zerging. If the devs decide to make that random mob a 100 foot tall tree and make it spawn and put a zone wide announcement, players show up by the hundreds to take it down. Taken at its core, what is so special about that other than being packaged differently than what we’re used to? I recall in EQlive, when Firiona Vie would make an appearance in Lesser Fay. Everyone and their mom would go. If Sony had made her into a killable mob, we’d all have had the blood of Firiona on our hands. Now if Sony had made 20 of her spawned all over, same deal.
As for skipping quests, if you do that, your gear would be severely lacking. Hopefully they change it but for now, if you go do your own thing, as fun as it may be for now, eventually the level 15 mobs will kill you in your level 5 gear.
My 3c I guess.
@Cedia I did weaponsmithing in beta 3 and most of the time I was using weapons that I crafted instead of quested weapons. I also sold a lot of them on the auction house. One of my lower toons was an armorer and another was a tailor and in those cases some of the quested items were better.
However, not all of the recipies are immediately accessible. Some need to be aquired after doing the tradeskill daily missions and you have to buy others from the quartermaster. So it is possible that better quality crafted equipment was not available because you did not have access to crafters that had the right recipies.
@Genda
All MMOs are more fun if you don’t play them as designed. I thought that was a given!
On the armor/gear issue, I crafted a lot of mine and got my best pieces as rewards for closing rifts. I didn’t pay that much attention to what I was wearing, really. It didn’t seem particularly important. Again, the way I play, gearing up isn’t really something I pay much attention to. I just use whatever I get and do whatever that allows me to do.
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This sweetens the deal: Direct2drive is having an MMO promo this weekend for those of us in the USA. 20% off all online games (including Rift) with promo code “Joker.” Digital CE for $47.96? Sweet!
I’m going to decide later today whether to buy it. I’m kind of hoping to get a Beta 4 invite to try out the pvp beforehand. If I like it, I’d grab the game over the weekend.
What else besides the rifts are fun and refreshing? The rifts sound like something that may be fun to do a lot initially, but after a while it may get to be “more of the same” if that is the only thing that is nice content.
It sounds like the world itself is a nice place to explore, which is good at least.
I wish I could say different, but it really just sounds like a polished WAR. So, once the first wave goes through the zones, no one will be left to fight the rifts, and it won’t matter.
If you are just looking for another variant of WOW/WAR, I can see playing this. But, if you have strong friendships/relationships in your current game, that gravity well is too strong to make the jump.
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Couple of points:
If there aren’t a lot of players in the zone, the rifts that spawn will be a bit easier. They scale to potential opposition. Also, it isn’t just enemy mobs that spawn..there are friend forces that spawn too. You can aide them if there’s no one else around. They also seem to spawn in correlation to the amount of players around vs the size of the invasions.
@genda — How do you know that using the quest system as a kind of back-up activity isn’t the way Trion intended us to play the game? I think, given that they call the game Rift, focusing on fighting rifts and filling in the downtime with quests is an intended way to play.
As someone who played WAR, Rift doesn’t feel very much like WAR to me. Or at least, it hasn’t. We’ll see how much the Warfronts drain the player population from the open world this weekend. When I played WAR all anyone did was grind PvP scenarios which left the rest of the world feeling pretty empty. We’ll see if that happens in Rift, too. I’m hoping it doesn’t.
As to whether Rifts get boring eventually… who knows, maybe they will. But not before I get my money’s worth… I’ve played plenty of $60 console games that last 8-10 hours and have been pleased.