GW2 vs Rift dynamic event

[Nerokis]

There are a lot of differences, but one of the biggest is this: DEs don't just fill the role of rifts, but also replaces traditional quests. In a game like RIFT, the bulk of the content is solo-oriented questing, and then on occasion a rift will pop up. Once that rift is done, people retreat back to their quest lines. In GW2, DEs make up the bulk of PvE content: there are over 1500 scattered throughout the world. And because there's no need to form parties - there's no allied targeting, so no need to see players' unit frames; there's no mob tagging, so this "who can tag the mob first?" mini-game is gone; most every support skill works with or without a group; etc. - people naturally cooperate with one another. People won't by default disperse back to their individual corners once a DE is done, either, because there's a constant flow of DEs taking place and they're often chained to one another; rather, over time ad hoc groups will form in this organic way.

GW2 is built from the ground up, whether it's in terms of combat mechanics or the PvE content, to be a social game. That's the main reason DEs will be more successful than rifts. Of course, DEs are also far more varied, have far more interesting effects on the game world, scale very intelligently, and so on. =P

[Deleted]

I played rift in the beat and for a month after, and really the rifts ended up being more of a pain than something I looked forward to, I often play at odd hours and invasions are intrusive when you are questing. Also I could see no real reason to play Rift over WoW, it was just more of the same.

I so truly agree with this: the constant spam of invasions and rifts every god damn 5 minutes is REALLY annoying, and well, they're always just the same thing. Maybe different mobs, sometimes a green ground, sometimes a black ground, sometimes a red ground, but still they're all just the same stuff. They were fun for the first 3 times, not after 20.000th time.

I really, REALLY hope the GW2 DEs are more creative.

[antonatsis]

well its like this
everquest come first then come WoW the evolution of it,the next big thing was War that actually put some new things on the table(doesn't matter it failed)well RIFT is the evolution of the idea that War brought AND GW2 is the evolution of RIFT
and i say that because RIFT come first and they just implemented the idea(they were doing it simultaneously since GW2 where both in development at the same time)its just that ANET taking it a step further in order to bring what they think is a good experience!

[MalazanFan]

There are a lot of differences, but one of the biggest is this: DEs don't just fill the role of rifts, but also replaces traditional quests. In a game like RIFT, the bulk of the content is solo-oriented questing, and then on occasion a rift will pop up. Once that rift is done, people retreat back to their quest lines. In GW2, DEs make up the bulk of PvE content: there are over 1500 scattered throughout the world. And because there's no need to form parties - there's no allied targeting, so no need to see players' unit frames; there's no mob tagging, so this "who can tag the mob first?" mini-game is gone; most every support skill works with or without a group; etc. - people naturally cooperate with one another. People won't by default disperse back to their individual corners once a DE is done, either, because there's a constant flow of DEs taking place and they're often chained to one another; rather, over time ad hoc groups will form in this organic way.

Well said. If it weren't for this, I would be really skeptical about GW2's DEs.

[Merendel]

Does GW2 have a pvp side? Dont you just click a button and you join the fight with the best gear and full skill set? Aint it entirely irrelevant in regards to character development?

With that same thinking though whats the point of other popular PVP esports like FPS's or RTS's? Theres no character development at all yet games like counterstrike and starcraft are widly considered competitive Esports while wow has a very small nitch by comparison. Part of the reason they are more popular as Esports is because its is a purely balanced playing field, theres no inate imbalance due to gear, pure skill vs skill.
Theres no need to take a pointless gear grind for pvp games to be popular, if anything it makes the PVP in a game less popular as there is a horific timesink as a barrier to entry.

well its like this
everquest come first then come WoW the evolution of it,the next big thing was War that actually put some new things on the table(doesn't matter it failed)well RIFT is the evolution of the idea that War brought AND GW2 is the evolution of RIFT
and i say that because RIFT come first and they just implemented the idea(they were doing it simultaneously since GW2 where both in development at the same time)its just that ANET taking it a step further in order to bring what they think is a good experience!

I would hardly call GW2 a continuation of what rift did. While its true rift released first they both entered development around the same time and DE's were already looking good a year ago before rift launched and we got to see how rifts were. They may have both had a similar idea but the fact remains GW built the game from teh gorund up around them while rift just tacked it on top of the standard MMO formula. The way you put it sounds like Anet saw rift and thought it was a good idea and so decided to improve on it when that couldnt be further from the truth.

[MalazanFan]

I think a better analogy would be

GW2 and RIFT:WAR :: Humans and Neanderthals:Monkeys.

GW2 took the evolution of DEs first seen(?) in WAR further than RIFT. We'll have to wait and see which outlasts the other to see how accurate that analogy is.

Edit: Just wanted to add that the analogy is obviously over-simplified and without a doubt not perfect.

[Merendel]

I think a better analogy would be

GW2 and RIFT:WAR :: Humans and Neanderthals:Monkeys.

GW2 took the evolution of DEs first seen(?) in WAR further than RIFT. We'll have to wait and see which outlasts the other to see how accurate that analogy is.

Edit: Just wanted to add that the analogy is obviously over-simplified and without a doubt not perfect.

perfect or not still made me chuckle. I still cant help thinking the humans and neanderthals is a reference to the warcraft universe though, wasnt the first game called orcs and humans? close enough for me anyway, dirty stinking orcs

[Deleted]

TotalHalibut posted some nice videos of this from Eurogamer 2011 where they talked a bit about dinamic events, showed one, and also a bit of character creation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ7JgKavJ5I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97V38aW6GEQ


From what I understood most of the "questing" will actually be part of dynamic events, so you won't go, take your quests, go kill 15 mobs, return, rather sometimes you might join some npcs, help them and at the end they'd "thank you" by giving you something, if you've played WoW in BC think of that event in Blade's Edge at the Skyguard post where at some hours they send some npcs to try and secure an etheral forge or something like that and if you protect them for a few waves they sell you stuff... if you die... well, nothing for you. Only upgraded and with different types of events, not just escorts, sometimes you help stop a landslide, sometimes you destroy bonewalls and buildings, sometimes you kill, sometimes you escort, sometimes you protect, etc, you get the point.

edit: and by the way, when the screen goes red/blue, it's a projector fault, not game one.

[probert]

The hate on for Rift isn't very appropriate I think... Rift's dyanmic events are, to date, the most sophisticated in MMOs at the moment and can be quite interesting. WoW has nothing close, and other MMOs either don't have them or their implementations are heavily flawed.

That said, the dynamism in GW2 looks to be truly revolutionary; Rift's public events are evolutionary and build upon the previous public quest models from Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer.

GW2's dynamic events seem to be story driven, which is the most interesting element. I want to see GW2's dynamic events 'in the wild' to see how they handle things like phasing, unbalanced realms, etc... but I agree in principle they appear to be very ambitious, and will deliver the 'next generation' MMO feel everyone is looking for if they're successufl.

[Eorayn]

Rift Beta was fun at start, but after I bought a blue greatsword for rift currency at level 20 I was already tired of rifts.

[Merendel]

The hate on for Rift isn't very appropriate I think... Rift's dyanmic events are, to date, the most sophisticated in MMOs at the moment and can be quite interesting. WoW has nothing close, and other MMOs either don't have them or their implementations are heavily flawed.

That said, the dynamism in GW2 looks to be truly revolutionary; Rift's public events are evolutionary and build upon the previous public quest models from Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer.

GW2's dynamic events seem to be story driven, which is the most interesting element. I want to see GW2's dynamic events 'in the wild' to see how they handle things like phasing, unbalanced realms, etc... but I agree in principle they appear to be very ambitious, and will deliver the 'next generation' MMO feel everyone is looking for if they're successufl.

While I agree rift has done more to make things dynamic than any other current MMO it still is lacking. You mention the main reason in your 3rd paragraph, GW2's are story driven, rifts, or at least the ones in the first few months were not for the most part. Most of the story behind the rifts was "The elemental dragons are invading us" and when you fought them off "we survive another day" that whole concept was basicly copy and pasted all over the world with different names and elements. Any one rift you fought off and closed was virtualy identical to any other in that zone, when you moved between zones the only thing that changed was the color/model of the mobs, it was still the same fights. The invasions were a bit better but in the end they boiled down to opening 20 rifts at once and trying to close them while defending 3 randomly chosen outposts. While all of this was interesting at first the repetition of the same thing over and over every zone quickly degenerated to the level of daily quests. They would no longer be interesting and worse frequently they would pop up in your way and interfere with whatever you were trying to do.

Admitedly I stoped playing rift a couple months after its launch so if they've made revolutionary progress in makeing more intresting rifts and invasions my hats off to them. STill the fact remains while I played the rifts felt like a gimic slaped on top of a wow clone to make the world more intresting. It did make the world less static to a point but fell short of making you feel like the actions were truely effecting the world. I felt more like a janitor runing around cleaning up the mess the dragons kept pukeing into the world through these interdimensional holes and all the NPC's just came right back like nothing happend when I finished. No continuing story just invaded status set to yes or no with a sub catagory for elemental type.

[Vaelkyri]

WvWvW sounds so good, almost like Old AV.

Thats sold me the game right there.

[Kalla]

I was only able to play Rift on the Beta, and oh I loved that game. Only got a charcter to like 27, but I still enjoyed that game. THe Mounts were cool too I did like the events, but I do believe that GW2's events will be much cooler. And I cannot wait for this game to come out!

[Deleted]

I was only able to play Rift on the Beta, and oh I loved that game. Only got a charcter to like 27, but I still enjoyed that game. THe Mounts were cool too I did like the events, but I do believe that GW2's events will be much cooler. And I cannot wait for this game to come out!

I bought Rift recently when it was on sale on Steam, just reached the max level this morning. The Rift devs have been updating their dynamic events quite a lot recently, they are still mostly the same but there's now few smaller variations to them and the various mobs that spawn. They also just a few days ago introduced some world-event thing. It is refreshing to see the game being updated constantly when you're used to Blizzard taking sometimes even months with simple bugfixes.

So far Rift isn't a bad game at all, though I haven't obviously seen any of the end-game content. I have several niggles with it, but, well, it's a good time-filler while waiting for GW2.

[Deleted]

Rift is the perfect example of graphics vs aesthetics.

I just wanted to add that Minecraft is an even better example.

[AlamarAtMMOC]

Sadly, it never surprises me how much ignorance fills into a thread that specifically asks people to compare two different features in <insert current hypefest> vs <insert half a year old/older hypefest>.

Rift events are a pretty different beast than GW2 dynamic events... The typical, run of the mill (that everyone that hasn't played Rift thinks the entire game is), rift is not much more than a randomized static event... Must like an individual step of a dynamic event... I think it would make more sense to compare Warhammer's public quests (or even some of the more involved quest lines/phases/etc in WoW) with GW2's dynamic events. To simplify, because it's fun, and based on ignorance, I can say that dynamic events are basically public quests, that are a little less static, and have random restart timers (as opposed to PQ's that just restart in a few mins), and there are seemingly more of them.

Anyhow, Rift events are superior to GW2 events in some ways, and GW2 events are superior to those in Rift in other ways : )

-Alamar

[Mothhive]

Anyhow, Rift events are superior to GW2 events in some ways, and GW2 events are superior to those in Rift in other ways : )

Care to elaborate on this? I only played Rift in a few beta events so I'm no expert, but from what I saw, I can't think of any way in which they are superior.

[Blufossa]

I was only able to play Rift on the Beta, and oh I loved that game. Only got a charcter to like 27, but I still enjoyed that game. THe Mounts were cool too I did like the events, but I do believe that GW2's events will be much cooler. And I cannot wait for this game to come out!

Yeah, Rift felt like a different version of Warhammer Online almost with their Rift Events. But most people just ignore or avoid them now, which makes me shake my head a bit because I never even hit max level. And you can't do the Rifts alone, you must have at least 10+ players to do most "invader" events, and even then you need the Trinity to make it work which is why probably most people won't play it anymore.

But I have to say I'm just completely excited for GW2's Dynamic Events! And the game in general.

So more or less:

Warhammer = Needed the trinity to complete.
Rift = Needed the trinity to complete.
Guild Wars 2 = Not much need for the trinity.

[Deleted]

And you can't do the Rifts alone, you must have at least 10+ players to do most "invader" events

Slightly incorrect: minor rifts of your level or lower can easily be soloed. Major rifts not so much.

[AlamarAtMMOC]

Care to elaborate on this? I only played Rift in a few beta events so I'm no expert, but from what I saw, I can't think of any way in which they are superior.

Well, in the end, it's a statement of opinions, not facts : )

However, major invasion events in Rift can take over areas of the map in a dynamic way, as opposed to how 'dynamic' events in GW2 are limited to their tiny little area of the world... : )

I'm bad at examples though, so I'll just leave it with that one. My point wasn't that Rift > GW2, it was that so many answers are the same... By people that haven't played the game, have seen a few similar rift events, and claimed that's the entire game... Things are rarely like that ; )

But again, different types of events with different designs, should be... different : )

As for Rift solo-ability, I was able to solo all minor rift types, and some of the major ones (required more fancy footwork), on multiple characters... Some people hate the way WoW is now, where you can solo 99% of the content while levelling (they want the massive back in MMORPG), and others hate having to find people just to advance their storyline... I'm more the second, but I enjoy group content...

A major rift invasion (zone wide, rifts popping up all over) can't be solo'd, obviously, because there are too many mobs for one/a-few to handle, and if you complete the objectives (wait, what? It's not always just 'kill 50 mobs'), the big bad boss will likely kick your small groups buttocks : )

As for solo-ability in GW2, it looks like it'll be another WoW-Clone in that regard, because it'll all be easy, too easy for those that want a challenge. Or at least, that's what everyone who claims the lack of the trinity is so good seems to think, because now that they can heal, they'll get through the content... But if everyone is super, no one is (heh, Incredibles ftw). In other words, and hopefully more clear... If everyone can heal, that means for the content to be challenging, it takes those extra hit points into account...

-Alamar