Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Rift's Talent system = Generic toons
I'm not sure what the higher levels will bring but after 14 levels Rift's talent system is starting to show it's flaw. Yeah cherry picking the best talents from each class is great but the result is just a culmination of blandness and most it doesn't make a lick of sense. For example you can be a Paladin Reaver Warlord...WTF?
How can one be both a Paladin, a high fantasy idol for a "good" fighter and a Reaver which is basically a death knight. The worst thing is how nobody looks the part. Pallies don't look like pallies and Reavers don't look like Reavers. Everyone is running around like a generic "fighter guy" pressing hotkeys from the pallie and reaver tree. LAME.
Comments
I think what I am finding is that each soul has a few abilities in it which are themed to the role of the soul. However those are far up the tree and force you to heavily invest in the soul if you want it's "class" abilities. otherwise you get a peppering of minor perks and generic attacks.
I tried a paragon/riftblade combo and found I either found my hotbar with a ton of generic "do dmg and earn an action point" moves with a few finishers which did the same dmg, or focused into one soul and got some flavor but had little to no use for the other souls.
You're either a bland multiclass without the key abilities of the soul (found near the upper branches of the souls tallent tree) or you focus on the soul and might as well not multispec at all.
Maybe by level 50 I have enough spill over points to get 100% into 1 soul and 25% into a 2nd soul, but I hardly see it viable to distribute points into the lower branches of 3 souls and never get the class defining abilities.
It's also hard to ask for a DPS and get a rogue only to later find he's mostly a bard which is a support role. Without identifying a persons "souls", the group leader has to go by their base archetype which can be decieving. My marksman/ranger was doing crazy good dmg compared to my ranger/bard. I mean like 2:1 dmg, but both were 'rogues'. How could a group know?
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
I dont normally respond to threads on these forums because people can be so short sighted, but this takes the biscuit.
How can you really determine the out come based on playing up to lvl 14 and seeing max characters at only lvl 20.
The idea of the class system is to find the right match for how you want to play and find what works well.
For instance the paly and warlord dont work well, your right. I found this out myself. The pally works very well using a sheild with his skills, where as the WL does not, so alot of skills are wasted. But atleast we have been given the chance to try it. Because surely the gripe would be that we could not if we could not try it.
There are different loooking armours, you have to earn the medals from rifts to exchange for them. And what else can you really exspect at lvl 20, cmon.
While this does seem good, when you look at the long run, eventually you have very few elite builds. If what you say is true, then people WILL eventaully fall under a few simple combos.
That would mean the game isnt balanced, and it happens in all mmorpgs.
If too many people are using specific combos then hopefully devs are tracking it and will realize 'wow a huge amount of players are specing these three skills together' and make the correct modifications to balance the game.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
While I agree that will be the case, it will still be much wider array then with a normal MMO. I personally have used both wierd and very generic builds in MMOs, and know that generic builds are there not because the game is flawed, but because not everyone enjoys trying to min-max something on their own, or is plain lazy.
Of course there are games that basically force you into cookie cutter builds, but Rift is not one of them. My Warlord/Void Knight tank rocked, and i was basically immortal as long as i targetted an enemy with mana.
I held similar concerns when I tried the game in Beta 1, but luckily there was a change for Beta 3. You now get an extra point every three levels that cannot be spent in your primary class. Thus it is now possible to start reaping some fruits from other classes while still having the maximum number of points in one class. It should also let you, if you wish, make a fairly decent two-class build at level cap.
There are a few things we need to concider here.
1. not all souls will be good together when mixing
2. not all souls are for the same style of play.
3. you have the ability to get multiple specs and switch when you want.
Paladin is a powerful shield tanker that can do great multi-target damage a powerful heal along with bringing players backfrom the dead. Great for groups as a traditional tanker and can be paired with Beastmaster for added pet dps and Warlord for boost to overall fighting. This mix can be balanced in different ways by popping out of spec into another one with a different balance for grouping or soloing.
Reaver is a two hander type of character with strong damage over time and is very similar to the Paladin in most respects so should NOT be mixxed with Pal as you wouldn't gain much from it....but you can if you want to. There are several souls that help out the Reaver spec as well.
There are also combos that are outside the box and allow for some crazy gameplay. I will not tell you what that mix is because it is my belief it is overpowered and I want to try it out next beta to see how it works together to be sure.
As I mentioned though it all comes down to having situational soul mixes. If you mix right you will pretty much always have some serious fun solo and be needed by groups and do well in PvP.
As far as the character looks go. You start the game as a single class. You will always be that single class but as you advance in level you will find a huge assortment of armors and weapons from crafting, dungeons, Rifts, and questing that will certainly change how your guy looks. It won't be over the top cartoon style like they did in WoW but that's actually a good thing in my book.
I think that is a rather bland way of looking at things. You assume everyone will want cookie cutter builds. You have 8 souls at your disposal for each type. You cannot max more than one soul so you have a variety of permutations to play around with in your whole track to the end game giving you what basically no game except FFXI has done in terms of freedom of playing how you like. You can be a dps today as a mage and tomorrow play a buffer healer in the afternoon and go with a solo pet build at dinner. The cost merely a purchase of a new soul.
Contrary to your opinion that everyone will pick the generic combinations which I do admit might happen for raids but in eevry other situation including PvP you will see people experimenting and having fun. I think the game is far from generic in fact it is the only thing setting it apart from the stable of games currently live.
I agree. I went up to 20 and did a lot of pvp, however. Even Shadowbane had more definition with various class branches. If you think in terms of a traditional mmo, then yes the classes / art style / combat is all bland. I think the key is treating this game like an FPS - i.e. not caring about the details and enjoying the player-vs-player combat. It doesn't take long to get into a pvp confrontation unlike other mmo's where you have to trek very far, get setup, etc. Im not huge on pvp in mmo's, but this game would be insanely boring without it. And it's actually quite fun, despite the buggy tagging system. But yes...the class roles are all a pretty bland dps or tank or support setup. It doesn't give you the appearance that your unique, but instead makes you feel as you said 'fighter guy'.
Anyone know the amount of skill points a character would hypothetically have at level 50 to spread among their 3 trees?
TwitchTV Partnered Streamer
MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
Co-Leader of Inquisition
Youtube Channel
Theres been talk about an increase to 75 ish.
From my understanding it was increased to 66 total Soul points
As it currently is you gain an extra skill point every 3 levels.
Rise above hate.
Ignore fan boys.
This is correct. The new total is now 66 points at level 50. You get one point every level, plus an additional point every 3 levels.
And heres the catch. The Amount of Souls they have makes for a impressive list of combinations.... on paper that is. In reality this is UNBALANCEABLE (did i just make up a word?^^). PvP will suffer in this game. And 50% of the highlvl playerbase does pvp! so anybody can guess what outcome this will have.
If too many people are using specific combos then hopefully devs are tracking it and will realize 'wow a huge amount of players are specing these three skills together' and make the correct modifications to balance the game.
And heres the catch. The Amount of Souls they have makes for a impressive list of combinations.... on paper that is. In reality this is UNBALANCEABLE (did i just make up a word?^^). PvP will suffer in this game. And 50% of the highlvl playerbase does pvp! so anybody can guess what outcome this will have.
Actually, they've stuffed most of your PvP talents into a single soul for each class. They can monkey with PvP talents and not touch the PvE talents.
At this point though, none of the beta testers has stepped foot into a battleground, so we don't know how it's all going to work out at all. So far, PvP has just been a small group of opposing faction players running to the other side and starting fights, where they get zerged by the 50+ people closing rifts.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Also once you pick your first soul, it shows you at the bottom in green what souls work better with. One thing I can't stand though is balance. I think there shouldn't be balance in any class at all, period. Balance to me only dumbs down the gameplay and effects to many classes overall. So what if some builds are to powerful, in the end some skills will be involved. And if you want to base it off reality, no single fight has ever been balanced. Fightning and War's have always been about how to get an advantage over an opponent. When you, lets say, prepare for a UFC fight, you try to find advantages like does the person have ground game? Does the person have injuries? And what not and use that against your opponent. Why people think everything should be fair and balanced kinda shocks me. I don't need nor want to go into a fight thats going to last 6-8 hrs because we are equally balanced. I go into fights wanting to finish you instantly, if I can. I do understand that we are playing a game though so reality doesn't exist nor should it. But balance to me just sounds to equal. And if people want true balance, then your going to end up having every class have the same talents and skills, meaning generic. If you don't then you will always have imbalance. And do we all really want to be the same, or do people actually want to be different. Can't really have it both ways.
Put it this way, if you want true balance your going to end up with a game where your always fighting a clone of yourself. Does that sound even remotely fun? Me, I like suprises. If you beat me, im going to do one of two things.
A. Find a way to beat you if possible or
B. Move on to the next opponent.
What I won't do is complain why your more powerful then me, mostly because it's not a bad thing. You had something I don't and you were the better man on that given day. If anything I may congratulate you.
mackdawg19 - agree. There are more important things than balance. Now, you don't want one cleric running through a Warfront with six people on him unable to take him down, but other than extreme cases, it's not something to spend a ton of time on.
Also, the players are going to find every possible way to tweak their toons, getting every last ounce of dps or damage mitigation out of them. Some people will play whatever gives them a 1% increase in dps no matter what it is. I would much rather see new content, new dungeons, new warfronts, etc. than to have the developer spending time making sure every class and every soul of every class does exactly the same dps in every situation.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I'll believe this part when I see it. A majority of gamers when beaten by a class that they KNOW is overpowered will come out and call it like it is, an overpowered class. A majority will complain on the official forums until they get a class nerfed.
This probably would make more sense if you approach it from a standpoint of the basic of fantasy roles which is:
-----------------------------------
Lawful Good: Civilization and order.
Good: Freedom and kindness.
Unaligned: Having no alignment; not taking a stand.
Evil: Tyranny and hatred.
Chaotic Evil: Entropy and destruction.
--------------------------------------
In fantasy it's quite easy to switch roles at anytime you like in many ways. There are also many more layers of alignment as well (Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, etc)
Say a "good guy" (as you say ) Paladin ganks a much lower opponent. That's certainly not sporting and worthy of a "good guy" Paladin type, but it's well within the role he plays within the game defending his side.
If one is strictly role-playing within a guild then I would agree with you and say you should kick him out of your guild. ( I think WoW does this on the RP servers, not sure)
But if a player is just playing a game and having fun, I'm not sure what problem you have with class mixing. It's really not that big a deal considering they are paying the sub so they should choose the classes they like, not someone who isn't paying it for them.
"TO MICHAEL!"
What I actually think will happen is someone will have a group and say "We need a Warden".
So a Warden joins the group and they are all ready to go, get into the dungeon and things start going funny.
Then the tank says "Hey Warden, why aren't you doing Blossom of Life Essence, man? We need some more healing buffs/w/e"
The Warden replies, "Oh, that's too high up the tree. I went Warden/Pyro/Marksman so I didn't have enough points to get the Blossom because I got Teleportation."
It certainly could start a situation where unless you have this, this and this skill maxed as a this, this and this class, you don't get invites, which will make a lot of people who want to break cookie cutter molds angry being blacklisted for groups. ("Don't invite him... he doesn't have so and so skill")
If I can see that (and others) I'm sure the devs at Rift have thought of that long before though as something being problematic and having a solution ready. (not in beta so idk if they do now or not)
"TO MICHAEL!"
In a way this happens in WoW already, while my sub was recently active I saw LFG's specifiying "Need Holy Paladin for such and such"
I don't think that this will just be a WoW thing, I think any game that allows multiple talent trees will see players looking for a specific build to suit their instance/raid group.
I could see this being the biggest potential problem of this system, if there is one. Most of the arguments people have are pretty small compared to this.
What I actually think will happen is someone will have a group and say "We need a Warden".
So a Warden joins the group and they are all ready to go, get into the dungeon and things start going funny.
Then the tank says "Hey Warden, why aren't you doing Blossom of Life Essence, man? We need some more healing buffs/w/e"
The Warden replies, "Oh, that's too high up the tree. I went Warden/Pyro/Marksman so I didn't have enough points to get the Blossom because I got Teleportation."
It certainly could start a situation where unless you have this, this and this skill maxed as a this, this and this class, you don't get invites, which will make a lot of people who want to break cookie cutter molds angry being blacklisted for groups. ("Don't invite him... he doesn't have so and so skill")
If I can see that (and others) I'm sure the devs at Rift have thought of that long before though as something being problematic and having a solution ready. (not in beta so idk if they do now or not)
In a way this happens in WoW already, while my sub was recently active I saw LFG's specifiying "Need Holy Paladin for such and such"
I don't think that this will just be a WoW thing, I think any game that allows multiple talent trees will see players looking for a specific build to suit their instance/raid group.
What I see happening is that even if this isn't an issue (i.e. you always have what you need, just not necessarily from who you expect it from), people would make an issue of it anyway.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
The difference is most other MMOs don't push the ability to build your toon as you like as the main selling point. Wow sure doesn't and up until Cat, the other roles weren't even viable for every class. There is no role for a stealthy rogue in most raids for example.
I personally think if you're a healer and going to a raid, you better have a toon that's set up for healing, not PvP.
The problem that COULD come in this game is unless there is a way to pre-screen people out, you could very well end up with people who are supposed to be doing one thing when invited, but not built for it basically playing the way they want without regards to the group.
i.e. a teleporting tank or a nuking healer.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Well they'll have 4 slots to make their builds in. Plus you can change it during downtime in ~1 second. The hand holding in this game will prevent that from happening too often- unless someone is being stubborn.