Rift is a very solid and well polished PvE game but the PvP sucks but if you don't care about PvP you will enjoy it.
Rift is a very solid and well polished PvE game but the PvP sucks but if you don't care about PvP you will enjoy it.
Well I do care about PvP since that's what I do the most of in any game, but I'm not into a "SRS Arena" scene. I like casually PvPing through interesting maps. SWTOR has been my favorite as of late, mainly due to fun classes and interesting map objectives. GW2 is fun from a class gameplay perspective, but the downed state mechanic can get really annoying, especially when you try to Rambo.
What's Rift's "end game" PvP like?
Routinely critiqued for being under par; something I disagree with wholeheartedly.
5 warfronts (BG's)
1 Conquest feature (3 faction 200 v 200 v 200 bg)
PvP Rifts & dailies.
I have sunk countless hours into conquest. easily the best PvP feature in any MMO in my opinion.
We do not know what Trion have planned for PvP in storm legion yet, though.
{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }
Its definitely not the best.
Many people are PVEing in rift and PVPing in gw2 or plan to pvp in swtor when it goes free to play.
But EA might prevent people from pvping in swtor with over restricting the number you can do.
If they over restrict I think that the 1-49 bracket will suffer. I mean, those people don't need to be subed to do 1-50. So why would they sub just to be able to pvp a little while leveling?
(Warframe) - Dragon & Typhoon-
(Neverwinter) - Trickster Rogue & Guardian Fighter -
I find a lot of negative posts in regards to Rift from individuals that have never actually played the game at level 50. Most of them come from the "I tried the trial and quit" or had some mid-level character. You really don't even get to experience much of what the game offers since pre-50 content is primarily questing with some IA, normal dungeons and warfronts.
Iceberg can't fathom that there is a game in existence that's better than TOR.
---------- Post added 2012-10-12 at 03:07 PM ----------
That's fine. Instead, compare pre-Cata WoW talent calculator to current Rift talent calculator.
Not certain why you say it's a low blow. In context of this thread and the question asked it's relevant. As you say it was a design decision. The difference being the player has to make more decisions in Rift. I'm going to refer to choices as developers keep removing choices for the players I find the game gets blander and blander. If you were to ask an outsider to look at the options available side by side for both games as far as talents/amount of specs/ class differences etc etc and then ask which offers more complexity I think the answer would be clear. Facts are facts. With that being said a Rifts souls (talent) specs can get slaughtered by a bad player or bad decisions I won't give it a give it a free get of jail card.
Yeah that was my point. The pre-set souls were not there from the get-go, why because they were overwhelming maybe not to you or I but trust me they were to others and with 6 souls to build with the upper and lower tiers of talents...well yeah toss in the new souls coming with SL you better have some pre-sets for the players who rather not have to theory craft or care about min/maxing.
I will agree the gameplay is not difficult and is a hot key MMO that part is standard fare. I think the word I want to keep hammering is the "CHOICES", do not take them away from the player. Rift continues to constantly give you more and more. A little fact that was a breaking point for me in WoW was removing the choice to to do 10 and 25 mans they combined the lockouts etc etc I don't even know how they do things now to be honest I've not played for close to two years but let me decide how many times I want to run my character through a raid. EG: Normal 10 then heroic 10 then normal 25 then heroic 25. I use to use my main to help out alt groups and then they took that choice away from me.....
From my point of view, having started my MMO career with Eve-Online, all games are Noober Friendly. And here are some reasons I think that Rift is even more noob friendly than anything else I've played:
- When you die
- In Rift, you must (eventually) pay a fee to "heal your soul" relative to your level.
- In WoW, you must (eventually) pay a fee to "repair your gear" relative to your gear level.
- In Eve-Online, 1/2 your stuff explodes, and your killer grabs the rest.
- When you select create a new character
- In Rift, you select between 2 factions each with 3 races (total of 6 combos), each with their own non-combat ability and small permanent buff.
- In WoW, you select between 2 factions, each with 7 races (total of 14 combos), each with their own unique combat ability.
- In Eve-Online, you select between 4 races, each with 3 bloodlines, each bloodline having 3 "Ancestries" (total of 36 combos), each combination of which modifies the starting point of your core stats, effectively setting the max value of these stats for the character permanently (since training and implants increase these base values by a fixed maximum).
- When you get scammed
- In Rift, Trion gets you fixed up pretty quick.
- In WoW, Blizzard gets you fixed up pretty quick, provided you don't get scammed too often.
- In Eve-Online, if you're "lucky", the story of how the scammer managed to fleece your corporation (or alliance) of all its value makes the news.
- When you try to make money off the AH
- In Rift, you sell artifacts, and sometimes buy items for resale.
- In WoW, you install an addon that puts trends at your fingertips (after some configuration), and automates the buying and selling of items. Unless you're a noob, in which case you don't install the addon, and wonder at how "BANCHORALT" just listed 500 items in 2 minutes.
- In Eve-Online, you pore over the ingame spreadsheets, reference external sites, read the CCP issued quarterly marketplace reports, follow the market indices... and I'm not really sure.
But I digress. If you've played an MMO, you'll do fine. And, for whatever reason, in Rift there's a lot fewer people who don't know what they're doing that there are in WoW.
The catch is that you will, one day, wake up....dead! You will have wasted away because of hours spent just doing stuff! Not even raiding. There's so much in the game and SL is adding to it. I will re-iterate the somewhat daunting characteristic of it, it's definitely simple once you get the hang of it (like most things, I suppose). They even have "Crafting Rifts" whereby you gain rare crafting materials for your chosen professions. And like someone said earlier, you can set out to do something like quest or dailies only to have your time swallowed by an Invasion! Definitely one of my favourite parts of the game!
I used to play Rift extremely casually as I couldn't devote time to raiding in both WoW and Rift. I have to say that Rift feels like one of if not the most casual friendly MMOs on the market, or it gives that impression at least. Many times I would log in thinking I'd only be on for an hour or two, knock out a couple of dungeons, maybe get in a Daily Raid Rift... and I'd end up spending 4+ hours because there's an IA going on and I always need more Sourcestones, or a Zone Event popped up, or Conquest came around. Rift does a good job of making you feel like you're having fun even doing boring dailies (or at least I felt that way) because there's always the chance you'll run into an IA group or a zone event.
I like how they have/had the Daily Raid Rifts as well (and the Daily Expert Rift but nobody rans those really) because it gave even the most casual of people as long as they had some gear a way to do some improvements and participate in what was still a raid-like atmosphere. Plus people seem to be worlds friendlier; there were always a handful of trolls but for the most part you could ask questions in Rift and get helpful answers or people.
Call me lazy, but I just wanna ask couple questions:
1. Can I get very best (stat-wise) raid-equialent gear by playing solo (not being in guild, just doing dungeons with LFG tool)? And if yes, how much longer it'll take?
2. Any options to combine looks and stats of 2 different items?
3. Is it same "put 10 abilities into one macro and spam it" fest as it was at launch?
4. Are melee finally viable in dungeons?
This is where Blizzard goes wrong, trying to cater to the lowest common denominator while making sure players with no self control doesn't feel compelled to do things they don't really want, all this while trying to make the game for a broader audience than any other game on the market, and to top it off they herd players through all "difficulty settings" before starting it all over with a new segment of content.
More OT, from what I seen so far after reactivating Rift I'd say they keep striking a good balance of easy options for the player that don't care about min/max while keeping the openness for the player that likes theory crafting and experimentation.
1. yes you can, but the game is grindy and in all honesty I feel like they punish you for playing outside of a social sphere :P. there are several solid items you can obtain solo from doing epic quest chains (although you will probably need assistance for a few of the quests) but the epic water saga for example gives you a helm and shoulder item, while the Ember Isle quest chain gives you pants. there is a planar gear set comparable in stats to other tiers, you need a truckload of ISS. the duration of time is up to you. I've been able to farm 650 ISS in under a month by doing events, participating in conquest, and using the rift mobile app, at a fair rate of play of 2 hours a day on average.
2. RIft uses a different system, you have 4 wardrobe slots that change your looks while you get to also keep your main gear in your primary set. you can customize your character till you get sick should you wish from a looks, talent, gear, and style perspective.
3. Macros have mostly been broken (this happened like 6 patches ago). while you can still choose to play that style, it is now far more difficult in patch 1.11 from the feedback we're getting on the PTS.
4. Melee classes have long been criticized for being very viable and OP in all environments (raid, pvp, etc).
Its a different game. 11 patches will do that.
---------- Post added 2012-10-15 at 09:23 AM ----------
Ultimately, this is what they have done very very well. introducing elements into the game that don't pigeon hole you and are divorced enough from other content to not make you feel like you *have* to do something to progress your character; just look at the quest system:
Don't like quest hubs? fine, do some Instant Adventures
Don't like IA's? fine, do some questing through the carnage system
don't want to beat on mobs all day? fine, do some epic quest chains
don't want epic quest chains? fine, we offer story driven quests only across all zones
don't like story based quests? fine, go do some hunt rifts
don't like hunt rifts? ok, mentor down and do Zone Invasions wherever you find them
Its exactly the same with dungeons, chronicles, daily expert raids, daily raid rifts, 10 man and 20 man raids - with the new massive zone battles to boot, each of which offers you the proper gear reward for your gaming needs.
the game does not punish you for say choosing to level up via IA's than doing so via story driven quests.
{I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }
I would say that Rift isn't a casual friendly game at all right now, if you don't raid there's only so many times you can do the 5man's/Rifts before it gets stale and getting good gear from sourcestones/5man's takes a lot of time.
I'v subbed on and off the past year simply because I haven't had time to raid so everything else wasn't really worth subbing for.
But Storm Legion changes everything, so I think I will be playing a lot more than I have the past year, player housing alone would probably be enough to keep me subbed for at least a month.
if they allow easy solo top end gear aquisition, I might consider coming back to rift for a month or two. Well.. Relatively easy. Say, pro raider gets it in 3 weeks, I get it in 5-6 weeks or so.
Last edited by Vice80; 2012-10-15 at 01:48 PM.
1. The very best? No. The very best comes from the set you con buy without ever stepping foot in and "upgrading" it with a crystal that drops in the latest raid content. That is also just the main set and does not include accessories(Rings, neck, trinket) or weapons, which you will need to run raids to get the "best" gear. However, if you are not running raids, you really have no use for the best gear anyway. We also do not really know yet(or those that do can;t say anyway) how gear will work in SL. I don't see them deviating too far from the current system though as it works well.
2. Wardrobe feature lets you look however you want, while not affecting your stats in any way.
3. As far as rogue goes, the class I play, no, not really. You can somewhat simplify some things with macros, to save a little space on your bar, but not everything in one. There are even cases where you can macro things if you want but will actually cause a DPS loss and it is a lot better to separate it out and manage it yourself.
4. Yes.
From a design perspective it makes perfect sense, raiding demands lots of time and dedication not to mention the commitment associated with it, the alternative to it being everything else doable at your own leisure, have less of a time restriction on non raiding activities would simply make it to competitive.
That would simply make raids redundant as I'm assuming the hardcore raider would probably play about twice as much as you hence could solo gear in the same time as raiding, half the time if he did both.