A disingenious statement at best and you know that.
That aside, you are correct....about the warriors. Their development has been badly mismanaged. Its never good when a large portion of the player base is actively calling for your dismissal. Whats funny is that in Beta 2 warriors were pretty balanced. Only Tempest was ridiculous. But Beta 3 and live had tons of sledgehammer nerfs not just to Tempest but to other warrior souls that frankly were completely ridiculous. Warriors didn't need a huge adjustment.
I think in general Trion did a good job with class balance in Storm Legion, warriors exempted. Rogues are as balanced as we've ever been, clerics seem to be in good shape and mages well..... they may be a tad OP but its nothing outrageous.
But Trion continues to have no idea how to balance in pvp. Its one clueless decision after another. If I wanted to play a FPS I'd be playing Blacklight Retribution. But thats what pvp at 60 feels like right now. And its because like with Atrius, the pvp devs go way overboard in making adjustments. It was very close to being where it needed to be in Beta 3 for the level 60 test. Then 2 days before launch, a ton of stacking changes to increase burst damage and reduce healing and survivability came through. The higher you advance in pvp rank and level the more obvious it becomes. I was enjoying pvp at 50 to 54. But its getting ridiculous now.
This.Warrior tanking is a flat out joke right now and anyone watching any of the end game progression guilds cannot argue this.
I am so terribly frustrated. A guildmate Cleric could comfortably tank where I needed a lot more healing / assistance. The block re-balance FUCKING SUCKS.
Pretty obvious that by virtue of class and role, Warrior tanks add nothing to progression. Yet I do not play any DPS class. Adding insult was the Warrior dev recent comment that Warlord was never meant to be a tanking soul. It was for soloing and PVP-- well, it blows for leveling and fuck off PVP.
What was even the point of allowing Warlord to pass like this?
Yesterday's defacto Reaver is today's Paladin. There is little freedom in Warrior tanking- way too much redundancy, terrible mechanics, terrible balancing, way too many damage increases in tanking souls.
Last edited by Fencers; 2012-11-29 at 01:07 AM.
Makes you wonder how Warriors lasted so long (20 months) without a Tempest soul, if only Trion would give each calling another eight souls to mix and match...
I have seen, but here is the key to remember. Mages are basically working. Harbinger plays like Champion uses to honestly. It is a mind fuck to play a Harbinger like I used to play 51Champ pre 1.11, but also have mad survivability thanks to the soul being soooooo damn fluid with Chloro
If warriors just worked like Mages or hell even Clerics do who have interactive devs, then everyone would be happy. Instead we get the roller coaster
You want to go therE?
1.0-1.1 - Champion was king, then got raped with a nerf bat and was useless
1.2 - 1.3 - Paragon was the only soul you could dps with
1.4-1.6 - That 36Champ/26Para thing was our top dps...Vals rising waterfall <--I miss that one
1.7 massive revamps to warriors tanking and dps gave us multiple tanking specs that worked and multiple champ and para souls specs that worked
1.9 some fucker came up with this god awful complicated 51 Champ rotation that required like 4 hands, but gave crazy dps
1.11 - Champ got completely gut'd, Paragon got completely gut'd, Warlord became stupid OP, but got gut'd with SL release
SL RELEASE date after MONTHS AND MONTHS AND MONTHS AND MONTHS AND HOURS AND HOURSSSS of testing and feedback
5 minutes before SL releases massive changes to base stats of warrior souls throwing the entire class into fucking chaos and throwing 4 months worth of parses out of the window and the response from Atrius is a "thank you, but go fuck yourselves I know more and have this grand vision"
SL Hot fix 2: Tempest gets gut'd and reduced by 20% across the board. The self heal is removed and replaced with a ability that was not even remotely tested once before going live resulting in a week of no upper ability in Tempest making the soul all but useless. Paragon gets gut'd yet again with the excuse that ONE PARSE SHOWED HIGH DPS
SL Hotfix 3: Tempest gets a crappy ability that does not even remotely make up for what they removed and does dick for the dps loss. Warriors get a flimsy post at best with zero details, but the same promise that this time will be the one that fixes the class. Also btw ZERO public testing on these grand changes.
^ ROLLER COASTER
You starting to see why MAYBE JUST MAYBEEEEE warriors have a good reason to be pissed?
PERFECT example
http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...s-2-0-a-8.html
Would people prefer it show up in the bar with the rest of the buffs? <--my god he ask the Mage community what they would like and how they would like their class to play.The icon actually shows up attached to the left side of your primary hotbar. It functions similarly to how a rogue's stealth works. You can see the time remaining on the stealth in the icon and you can also hit that as a button to break stealth early if you wanted to. The hope was that it would save you from having to search through your buff bar to find it and see how long was left and have it appear in a consistent place each time. There has been some confusion as a result though. Would people prefer it show up in the bar with the rest of the buffs?
Last edited by Puremallace; 2012-11-29 at 06:03 PM.
Yeah having so many changes is annoying. I rerolled cleric ~3 weeks b4 HKs release and even tho I regret it because thanks to the cleric dev always under-tuning the class compared to the other devs I at least didn't have to go through all those changes. It has to be noted however that warriors have always been extremely good at dps, besides maybe 2 months during rifts entire life cycle - unlike clerics staring at things from the bottom of the barrel for almost the entire duration. Also has to be said that warrior tanking is not that great atm but its nowhere near as bad as the state of rogue and cleric tanking was at multiple points during 1.x while warriors had always been, by far, the better choice. (and based on pts atm expect super qq from the other classes, warriors are about to become extremely - over the top - op yet again, pts stuff from trion hardly ever change on their way to live)
Very surprising to see a heavily biased towards Activision game site like IGN give Rift an 8.3 and a largely positive review
Here's the sum up:
People actually complaining there's too much content and it's all overwhelmingThe Verdict
Initially overwhelming, Storm Legion becomes more attractive as you play. The scale of the new continents is impressive, and the wealth of content available means that even if there are some weak points, by and large it’s more hit than miss. But it’s with the addition of Dimensions that Trion Worlds really breaks new ground, providing players with a powerful tool to create truly unique constructions.
No wonder any new "Messiah" MMO's are doomed from the start...read that again, too much content, bwahahahahha
Full review at Source: http://ie.ign.com/articles/2012/12/0...-legion-review
Agreed! Very nice, though.
To be fair, that's not quite what he was saying. There's a difference between the volume of the content and how overwhelming it feels. You can throw the entire expansion at the players and hope they swim or you can give them multiple, clear paths to follow. Storm Legion falls down in many places (let me be clear: love SL, and am being critical only to make a point) where the player has a hard time clearly understanding what the intent was, and thus feels conflicted in how to proceed.People actually complaining there's too much content and it's all overwhelming
No wonder any new "Messiah" MMO's are doomed from the start...read that again, too much content, bwahahahahha
I've had to correct many a player who complain that the "questing in SL sucks"... when asked, one of the most common reasons for this complaint is that "there are so many carnage quests, and after slogging through one, you end up getting sent back to the same area again on the next quest!" This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how carnage quests are supposed to work, but it's clear that it's a very, very common first take.
If Trion had added a quest at the start of SL that had walked a player through the idea of ignoring carnage quests and doing them only as a "side effect" of their storyline progress, and then mopping them up before moving to a new area, then a lot of players who hate questing in SL would have been much, much happier!
The same goes for onslaughts (which, to be fair, I don't think Trion anticipated being one of the primary leveling tools of the expansion). They did introduce instant adventures and hunt rifts very well. Each has their own quest line and really helps players figure out what they should be doing, so props there!
The physical layout has similar problems. There are some places (EH) where quests guide you through finding the various porticullums in a zone, but if you miss that quest (as I did, the first time through)... oh dear, you're going to HATE quests in that zone at first. Also, the placement of graveyards makes the zones feel more unreasonably large and empty when a player dies than is required. I have a bad habit of dying a lot from falling damage (should have played a dwarf!) and places like EH and IS were my bane when it came to leveing!
All minor concerns, though, and I think the review strikes the right balance.
Ok here's a final review from MMORPG.com buy a writer who actually plays the game which I can personally validate since we almost speak daily about the game in game.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...oad/246/page/1
Seems about right. I was talking to another mod on IRC a few weeks ago and said I'd likely give SL an 8.5 out of 10. I think the expansion sits very comfortably in that rating bracket. Perhaps the overall game of Rift is closer to a very solid 9.
I drafted an EOY game list based on the notes I made throughout the year. It still pans out SL falls between an 8 and 8.5 too. Even when judge against high quality title in other genres. Would not say that is a bad place to be*.
*speaking entirely on my own subjective measure of quality gameplay. which isn't too important i suppose.
I agree there isn't many if any games that I'd give a 9+ rating.....ever. This review while final is technically a first impression review still since the author is level 56 at the time of the review. He does have a background from launch so can make realistic reviews based on experience beyond just watching a YouTube video or forum feedback.
There will be some more ongoing impressions on endgame content to come and not just "raiding"
Oh, I can think of a couple of games that I would give a 9 to this year; Hotline Miami, Journey, Torchlight 2. Not MMOs granted. Those are all excellent games with few design faults that ruin gameplay goals.
I can't find any faults in TL2- the game might be "perfect" in a certain sense. Just not particularly inventive.
Still, I think SL was up against some stiff competition this year in MMOs. Secret World for all its technical faults was pretty darn good/creative. Guild Wars 2 is stellar and an important game in the genre if by exposure alone. Getting an 8.5 is pretty, pretty, pretty good for Storm Legion.
Within the MMO genre and compared to other game genre I do think that holds up well. As I said before, the biggest hurdle with Rift is that it is a solid MMO. Oddly enough.
Only thing that bothers me about the mmorpg review is the critique about the lack of new stuff for 1-50.
Like...really? Expansions rarely do much to "old" content, and Trion has done more to improve the 1-50 experience through normal content patches that most games do in multiple expansions. Not to mention, the expansion is to add new content, not bother with old stuff. Seems like an out of place critique TBH, but if that's one of the biggest critiques they had, that's a pretty good one to be a "big negative".
I like the review overall though. Still think 8-9 is where the expansion sits on the whole as well. This is assuming a proper grading system and not the 7= shit, 8=ok, 9=good, and 10=great (not perfect, but great) system that people like to perceive.
Redited because I'm bad at phrasing.
Last edited by Edge-; 2012-12-14 at 05:41 PM.
The 1-50 classic Rift has been really changed as you say Edge but I think most of those changes have been over the course of classic Rift. The expansion was designed for level 50+ and dimensions so I do agree that there should have been little mention on original Rift.
I think even clasic rift is still getting love to this day and they added another 2 or 3 dimension areas you could build in classic in the last patch.
All reviews are subjective and will hit and miss on certain things I prefer ones where the authors actually play the game beyond 30 minutes.
They also made a lot of QoL changes to speed the 1-50 experience along. Something that was already very rapid in classic Rift/old world.
I might even feel tempted to but " " around QoL because it's pretty damn significant/faster now.
Yeah, I like the multi-part reviews for MMO's that some places have been doing (mmorpg, kotaku, and some others have begun doing multi-part reviews for bigger MMO's) that show that the author actually bothered to play for more than a day.
It's tough though, because reviewers are on tight schedules, and the changing nature of MMO's makes them a different beast than most games.
They actually updated the lighting and fog used in the 1-50 zones to the new techniques used in SL so I think it's fair to say the 1-50 experience will continue to improve in many ways not just content wise.
I play both RiFT and GW2 and RiFT is the only game that I’ve remained subscribed to for a long period (since launch actually) as even when I’m not actively playing I want to support the developer because I know when I log in after a week or two the game will have improved and there will be plenty to do.
SL is a pretty epic expansion and most of the reviews seem to concur, it’s definitely the single biggest game expansion that I’ve played but it makes me wonder how on earth Trion could possibly top it in the future, although I’m sure they will try
By taking all that wild and untamed space and packing it with events, objects and adventures, no doubt.
In another thread, I mentioned the immensity of improvements Rift made through its first 10 patches, nearly 'catching up' to the big fish in the sea. Rift, while still maintaining its character, has evolved quite a bit over the last year and a half. With a maturing base system, it's hard to even comprehend what could be in store for us over the next 1.5 years.
Has any game company ever introduced new races in a content patch? I have no reason to believe Trion will do so, but I also doubt it's outside their reach either. As the game systems continue to advance, the more I believe the biggest failing is a lack of diverse characters and animations. I'm not an RPer, nor do I play many alts, but for all the variety Rift offers, where it seems to come up shortest would be in character variety and complaints in animations.
Not a criticism of the game, just an observation based on repeated complaints by others.
Whatever Trion does, I have no doubt it'll be impressive.
If they release a new race, it had better come with a race change option, even a paid one (if the pricing is reasonable).