Rift Beta.. comments and screenshots

[Drexxil]

It's not just reading the tooltips. There are multiple abilities that are very similar in damage output that make it difficult to decide which is better. You can easily figure this out by dpsing some mobs for a while, but with such diversity in abilities it'd be nice if there was a little more clarity (i.e. so and so ability is better when you're this spec and so on). For instance, I just made a Paragon with Riftblade offspec soul and there are a handful of abilities that seem so close in damage done that it doesn't matter which I use, which is fine for me. However, someone new to the game that's not as experience will question why there's another ability doing the exact same thing just with a different animation. It just seems like they could have clarified the soul choices and their abilities more instead of just kind of throwing them at you as they did.

Let me reiterate, for a game that seems to try to appeal to the masses the way it comes off this aspect of the game doesn't appeal to them at all and is only overly complex to them. I agree with you that I like these choices, I just think it's a design flaw if their intent was for the average and below average players to pick this up easily.

But again, that's where the beauty of playing a multiplayer online game comes in. They are not left in the dark completely. They can easily make friends in game, and ask questions. "Hey man, what do you think I should use?". You're right, it is confusing for a new player to MMO's, I've said that before, but they are able to easily do their own research, look at their talent set up(such as a talent that states something like "X strike deals 10% more damage") and they will decide to use X strike over Y strike because they are gaining more benefit for it.

More detailed example, when I first started as a Cleric, I had Sentinel/Purifier/Warden as my choices. I had 2 carbon copy ranged spells. Both 2 second casts, dealt the same damage. However, two points into Sentinel caused the Sentinels version to snare the target. I dropped the Purifier version and picked up that. When I respecced to Shaman/Justicar/Druid, shaman gave me a buff for 5% extra physical damage. So, naturally I didn't use the druid's elemental strike version of the same strike shaman gets, because shamans was physical. I just used the non-striky stuff of druid(the shield, and the pet). I wasn't new to MMO's no, but I was new to Rift, and I could figure it out within the time before I even started doing grouped dungeons. It wasn't exactly difficult to figure out after looking at my options.

Minecraft didn't tell you what you needed/should do. People figured it out, figured out recipes, and made guides for those who don't want to spend the time figuring it out. Rift will be no different.

[Orodoth]

I'll pass my ultimate judgement when I get to see end game pvp and raids. I pre-ordered and such, as I'm not the type who likes to put a price on entertainment if I have the cash in hand. Hopefully it will be 60$ well spent..

confession: I do on the other hand feel dirty and traitorous for leaving WoW. the Blizzard cash machine has had a hook in my lip for quite some time now.

[hailey]

They don't do a great job of explaining the soul system, I answer a lot of the same questions every day. Not everyone is an experienced MMO player and even then most of them want their hand held. I mean how often do you see the question "how do I add extra hotkey bars" when it takes all of 10 seconds of looking in the options, in fact i think it's like one button less than you'd press to do in wow. Or "how do I rebind keys" when it literally tells you how to do it when you press the keybinding button.

I think it's just a result of the way we have been sorta conditioned to hit accept on quests without reading and following the tracker.

People could definitely figure out that they don't need to use the combo builder from both of their souls or the finishing move, and that they are redundant because there's no guarantee what souls you pick and the game wants to make sure you have the basic skills you need. I don't believe it's particularly challenging to figure that out, but i don't think spending the 10 seconds to figure out how to add new hotkey bars is either, but people refuse to actually do it on their own.

So I think it would be to the benefit of the game if they tried to hand hold people through the soul/skill system a little better than they currently do. It would definitely help those people who are looking for instant gratification and aren't interested in to figuring things out on their own

[Puremallace]

I'll pass my ultimate judgement when I get to see end game pvp and raids. I pre-ordered and such, as I'm not the type who likes to put a price on entertainment if I have the cash in hand. Hopefully it will be 60$ well spent..

confession: I do on the other hand feel dirty and traitorous for leaving WoW. the Blizzard cash machine has had a hook in my lip for quite some time now.

This is an expert mode boss that someone managed to aggro accidentally in Foul Cascade

http://i56.tinypic.com/1z56fs4.png

[Dammagia]

Ya know what, this thread has been back and forwards now for weeks, at the end of the day, I don't really care to try and convince anyone else.

If people are dumb enough not to try this and make their own mind up, that's their problem. I have cancelled my wow sub (3 months ago) and pre-ordered Rift.

I am almost level 40 now and the zones are awesome, quest are challenging (you die often) instance are genuinely fun and not just a dungeon, rifts are a welcome break from questing to mindless violence only and I bloody love it.

If you don't stick with what you enjoy, for me, I am a Rifter!

Played a bit of it today. It keeps disconnecting.

Fix for that should be installed tomorrow with a patch.

[CrazyCorky]

If I had the chance to try the Beta I would gladly do it. How ever I am currently on deployment and do not have that opportunity afforded to me. All I have to go off are peoples opinions and the countless threads, blogs, and other things I could possibly come up with. So I welcome any actual intelligent feed back on the state of the game. So to those are actually trying to give their opinion and insight on the game I thank you.

I know there has been minimal talk about end game content for the game so far. Aside from that is there any other down falls in the game?

[Hurpin-Meh-Durp]

Ya know what, this thread has been back and forwards now for weeks, at the end of the day, I don't really care to try and convince anyone else.

If people are dumb enough not to try this and make their own mind up, that's their problem. I have cancelled my wow sub (3 months ago) and pre-ordered Rift.

I am almost level 40 now and the zones are awesome, quest are challenging (you die often) instance are genuinely fun and not just a dungeon, rifts are a welcome break from questing to mindless violence only and I bloody love it.

If you don't stick with what you enjoy, for me, I am a Rifter!



Fix for that should be installed tomorrow with a patch.

i pre ordered and ended my sub 2 :3 sounds like you put alot of work into that lvl 40 sucks it will be deleted when headstart starts :[

[AuthurDent]

Some new shots...









---------- Post added 2011-02-16 at 08:22 PM ----------

As far as some peeps trying the game and getting bored... well that will happen. If you come into the beta with a fairly closed mind and look at it as a waste of time because the chars will get wiped anyway. Then everything you do will be filtered thru that mindset.

I don't get on and play hours and hours on end... I play a couple hour and go do something else.. I am not looking for a game that will require me to play every waking moment.. I want something I can play a couple hours and feel satisfied.. go do something else.. then maybe later in the day or the next day the urge to go back in and see some more...


The game just gets better and better as I level on... the mobs are more impressive.. the Rift running is getting really interesting too with bands of peeps ending up grouped together and going from Rift to rift... it's just a fun experience.

It's not going to be for everyone. Some peeps will say.. "If I am gonna do this.. I might as well do it with my other MMO" Others like me.. simply aren't interested in doing that in our "old" MMO.. but the slickness of this new game makes it enjoyable and worthy of our time.

[Deleted]

The endgame gear looks boring, i prefer my oversized glowy wow gearsets.

You probably should play a dress up game then, not a MMORPG.

[Kanshan]

Beta 5: Had a great fun, certain i would preorder

Beta 6: Doubts came.. realised this game would get seriously boring very quickly

Beta 7: Logged in for half an hour, bored already, logged out.

Game wont last as long as WAR did.

What i do with WoW right now

[Osmeric]

I find myself running around doing rifts, and later I'm surprised how much time has passed and how much planarite I've accumulated. It's engrossing. Soon, off to the first dungeon...

[Chompie]

I've played some of this here Rifty-game. I must say, I enjoyed what I've done so far! One thing that always draws my attention in MMO's is how they handle the mechanics overall. What customization is there? How do abilities work? Are they varied? Are there useless skills, or skills that are made obsolete for large segments of the game? Is building a character fun?

Well, the whole Soul system is really damn nice.

I enjoy playing around with it, but.. I'm afraid that won't last long! It's a great system, which attracts theorycrafters. Who tend to set up their website and broadcast their formulae and recipes for win to the world. And slowly, their discoveries become the norm, not just accepted, but required. Are you experimenting with builds? Stop that, you dumbshit. The right ones are already posted, get out of my group.

Anyway, that morose block of negative-nanciness boils down to a simpler and more positive statement:
If I had anything more than my small steady trickle of money, I would buy Rift. It will definitely be fun for a while. But by the time I can justify the entry price... well, I'm afraid of where the community might be. If by some fluke, the players of Rift don't suck- I'll see you there later this year.


---
In happier news: I really do love the mechanics and stuff. I have yet to see how everything fits in the grand scheme of things, but.. there's a lot to pick from! For example, I'm working on a melee cleric, focused around pumping every last benefit out of crit that I possibly can. I heal folks when I deal damage, criticals do 40% more than normal, and restore multiple resources, and proc a couple other abilities. I feel like *I* was the one who decided what my best stat to gear for is. That is a wonderful feeling.

[Narghile]

/100+ pages and flaming ! WOOT !!

[Shamslam]

What i do with WoW right now

Same. Logged on to my daily heroic and was like "meh, 30 minutes is too long" and logged off. Haven't been on in 3 or 4 days and really just couldn't care less.

I'm having the DC problems right now. Hopefully check later to see if it's fixed, if it isn't already. Haven't seen this much constant problem fixing for any game. Even for a BETA it's pretty impressive.

[Moonsorow]

I'm going to disagree with a lot of the review that was posted. While I might not be 41/42 I'm in the 20s and I have seen most of the content of the low levels.

I will agree the graphics are wonderful, this game wins in virtual beauty. Everything from land down to the player models. Where you see Trion skimped out on is the casting animations, and spells. You shoot a fireball it looks like something an Imp from WoW is casting, not a fireball. Void Bolt which is a spell for Warlocks should send out a Shadow Bolt style animation. It doesn't.

The soul system works and doesn't. Yes the customization is wonderful, yet a lot of spells overlap with other trees with a minor change. Ranger gets a spell called Head Shot which is a shot that does a ton of damage after 5 combo points. Marksmen gets a shot called Hasted Shot which does a ton of damage but increases movement speed. Its basically the same spell but with a minor change. All the classes that I have played are like this. If you pick the Chlormancer / Warlock / Achdon (sp), you basically have 8 or more dots to put up on your target to be able to solo. On top of that you have to weave in Void Bolt while your dots expire. A bit much eh.

As for the mounts, I don't know how you say those are nice. The mounts in Rift look like crap. The animations are clunky, they are way taller then avatar almost to the point where you need a stepladder to get on. The two headed turtle mount looks like garbage with no seat it's going to stick it's spikes up your butt. The pets (combat) look terrible, the Wolf actually looks good, but the pig looks bad. The elementals don't look that good either.

In terms of learning how to play, Trion doesn't tell you, and you can figure it out until you do something wrong. You won't know if you did because the game doesn't allow addons so you can't have a DPS meter tell you if your doing the right rotation, or even the right spells to compare yourself against someone else. A lot of people say meters are just for topping, I view meters to see how the individual does compared to someone of the same class and equal gear. Its how you teach a player. So you will never know if you are doing something right or wrong.

The UI / Macro system is terrible. The UI is Blizzard's UI which you are allowed to move, but thats it. You change change sizes but you are very limited on what you can do. You can't take out the picture of your character, you can't just see your Dots / Hots on the target frame, you can't see in a person is about to take a big damage spike, etc. Very limited and Trion has said they will not allow addons into the game, so no DBM which for raids is going to hurt people. The macro system is the same, you can't make bar-saver macros because there is no /castsequence or even allowed for multiple /cast lines. Your allowed one spell per macro and that's it. No more than that. By the time you reach level 20, you'll have all your bars filled (3 bars) with maybe one more getting filled. While you can have 10 bars, who is going to use 10 bars on the screen at the same time? Nobody. Finally, for the healers out there - No Vuhdo, no Grid, no Clique. Meaning no click-casting. While you can do mouseover heals, it again is very limited.

Bad things about Rift

• No customize UI
• No addons
• No taming for Hunters (yes your stuck with a pig, wolf and raptor and you can't change the color of it either)
• Mounts look terrible when riding. Look too tall when standing next to it.
• Rift invasions are nice, but most of the time your spending hours closing a Rift when you could of went questing to level quicker. This will be better later.
• Currently the Turtle Mount while is CE only limited people get it even if you pre-ordered it. Its a RNG based system, not one that you can choose. Its either you get the companion pet, or the mount. Not both.

[Puremallace]

In terms of learning how to play, Trion doesn't tell you, and you can figure it out until you do something wrong. You won't know if you did because the game doesn't allow addons so you can't have a DPS meter tell you if your doing the right rotation, or even the right spells to compare yourself against someone else. A lot of people say meters are just for topping, I view meters to see how the individual does compared to someone of the same class and equal gear. Its how you teach a player. So you will never know if you are doing something right or wrong.

How sad has the MMo world become that this sentence got typed?

[Armaros]

[*]Currently the Turtle Mount while is CE only limited people get it even if you pre-ordered it. Its a RNG based system, not one that you can choose. Its either you get the companion pet, or the mount. Not both.[/LIST]

Not true. You get a bigger starting backpack, reusable weapon enchant, the mount, and 2 pets. I've tried it on several characters.

[FattGuy]

I got to level 16 today and so far experience has been pretty decent to terrible.

In comparison to what makes WoW better than Rift, in the game, the rifts aren't that fun, they spawn at random points around the world and can go super well if there is a lot of people with you at the time the rift spawns or it can go into a wipe fest and can easily fail if only one or three people are there. The questing sucks, I am getting tired of its inconsistency. I went into Meridan as a defiant and I didn't get lost, but I had no clue on where everything was. At least in WoW, I could ask guards where the profession/class trainers are, instead in this game I get information on who what the guards are. PvP seems fine. The talent tree is a bit confusing to me to say at least, its hard to figure out how to balance your character to maximize the dps but in here, its confusing cause I am healing/support/dps. The Graphics I really don't give a rats ass but I hate looking at my character with low graphics just because I have a bad video card . I really don't give a crap about the story since there isn't a story that is good as the one in Final Fantasy X, Kingdom Hearts, or Assassins Creed.

In comparison to what Rift is better at than WoW; the UI is amazing. It is so customizable that WoW doesn't even have that stuff built in. Such as rift has bartender for example. Thats it .

I am sort of confused on why some of you guys are actually planning on buying this and preferring it than WoW. If you are getting bored of WoW, well guess what, its a repeatable gameplay MMO. Of course you'd get bored. You would get bored once you beat Zelda and knowing that you are done and the only stuff left to do is to collect the heart tokens. People unsubscribe a lot. I did too. My subscription ended and am now confused on why I would get WoW again, knowing that there is a large chance that I'd get bored again . Heck even console games look better for me at this moment. Same thing is going to happen in Rift if you haven't guessed.

[Puremallace]

CLIENT/PATCHER
* If the client cannot connect to the Rift servers using the normal ports [6000-6020], it will attempt to connect on port 80. Users with otherwise blocked ports should be able to connect to the game after this change.

TADA! Issue that appeared yesterday is fixed.

[Moonsorow]

Not true. You get a bigger starting backpack, reusable weapon enchant, the mount, and 2 pets. I've tried it on several characters.

Most players on the Belmount server are able to choose, not get the entire collection. I didn't pre-order the game so I don't know I'm going what I read in General chat and knowing some people who this has affected.

---------- Post added 2011-02-16 at 06:10 PM ----------

CLIENT/PATCHER
* If the client cannot connect to the Rift servers using the normal ports [6000-6020], it will attempt to connect on port 80. Users with otherwise blocked ports should be able to connect to the game after this change.

TADA! Issue that appeared yesterday is fixed.

Wow thats crap. So yes instead of having your own ports to connect to the game, it's going to use your HTTP port to do so. Smart (sarcasm off). Do you know how many hacked accounts Trion is going to have in the first month. Tons. And with no 2-way authentication this makes them look stupid.