MMORPGs as a genre has evolved a little but the main evolution that has lead to boring combat comes from the fact that people tend to solo more these days. In the old days of Everquest you played in groups and your boring pressing of spells or skills were not so noticeable as it involved group dynamics and being on your toes for bad pulls and massive training that can happen.
Nowadays we tend to solo which is fine but the same combat that used to have more depth when you were in groups becomes shallower because you get into a routine of spells or skills and keep using them to clear quests. The fact is that you notice the way you play now because you are only focussing on yourself. You are interacting less with others. If we played more with other people this factor wouldn't bother one so much.
This is where the rifts come in.I think the RvR and perhaps rift fighting will help the boredom of the combat. By participating in rifts and PvP we might be able to forget the routine combat. More and more games are falling prey to this general sense of ennui that is causing people to think that the genre needs a huge combat vamp when what it needs is more reasons to take your mind off the combat. When I used to play in the battlegrounds in WoW I used to simply love it and the combat was scintillating. Soon as I was soloing not so much.
To each their own but to say "anyone who says otherwise...." is pathetic.
How can you say "to each their own" and anyone who says otherwise is pathetic in the same sentence? You're saying, you have a right to your opinion, but if it doesn't agree with mine, it's pathetic.
It's nice that in a world of 7 billion people, your opinion is the only one that matters.
I agree that the combat seems slow to me, but that's pretty standard for MMO's except for those which are action based like DCUO. Rift is a pretty looking game, graphics wise, but it doesn't have a lot of innovation in its gameplay. It has some..the soul system is interesting but all in all, it seems like a mixture of all the AAA games that preceded it. That isn't a bad thing, but it does have the feeling of "been there, done that." I haven't seen anything that makes me go wow! that's new and exciting!. Even the rifts are the same as most staged world events in other games, re: the elemental invasions pre-Catacysm in WoW.
Personally, I feel that any sword and sorcery MMO is going to have a difficult time because of the constant comparisons to WoW, EQ and others. For an MMO to be different, it's going to have to be from an entirely different genre. Star Wars, the Old Republic may have a chance because of the subject matter, but Sci-fi has been done in the MMO world already and hasn't been very successful.
Personally, I think an Old West MMO would be an idea worth value, and even though it IS Sci-Fi, I would LOVE to see an MMO based on the old X-Com games or the V TV series. A small group defends the earth vs alien invaders concept. Like SWG, you could have crafters who use captured UFO parts to create new weapons, armor and vehicles. I think exploring crashed UFO battleships where the enemy is hiding and can attack at any moment would create some incredible atmosphere. Kind of the "jump out of your seat" feeling that's really missing from these kind of games. That is one thing I'd really like to see. Hidden enemies. Every MMO shows you the danger from a long way off. Maybe make a real FPS MMO where you can't see hundreds of yards around you by zooming out. There are a lot of things that could be done differently if only a company was willing to take the chance.
Unfortunately, with the development costs of new MMO's, I'm afraid that what we are going to see is a lot of clones using a tried and true system with little or no innovation beyond some new graphics or new storyline. Anything else would be too much of a financial risk for the suits.
/sigh, you probably should have actually read what I said, before that long ass rant.
To each their own but to say "anyone who says otherwise...." is pathetic.
How can you say "to each their own" and anyone who says otherwise is pathetic in the same sentence? You're saying, you have a right to your opinion, but if it doesn't agree with mine, it's pathetic.
He is saying anyone is welcome to have their own opinion (to each their own) but critisising the other poster for denying that basic right ("anyone that says otherwise"). That's why it's in quotes.
Heheh, I was going to respond with something similar. "I think you need to re-read their statement more carefully, and pay attention to the quotes"... Figured someone might have already done so by now.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
One thing that would be nice to have in the Rift combat skills would be chains, like the ones that are in Vanguard. Once a specific ability crits it opens up a chain of abilities that can be executed one by one until it either is complete or one ability misses.
no aiming required. Apart from looking in the general direction of the opponent, you don't have to aim. Which means you don't have to pay attention to your point of view.
no movement required. Mobs you fight rarely move. They charge you and use their melee abilities, or stay where they are and use their ranged abilities. Which means, you don't have to pay attention to your position.
no danger. There is no actual strategy required to kill mobs your level. You can activate your abilities randomly and they'd still die. Which means you don't have to pay attention to which skills are used at what situation
no surprises. If I fight a mob, I know that nothing special will happen. I get some minor damage, maybe some debuffs which vanish after some seconds, and that's it. And that makes the mobs exchangable. It's completly irrelevant which mob I fight, since they are all the same anyway.
All that combined means: you don't have to pay attention at all.
When I run around with my melee cleric, and got the typical buffs on her, I can just keep pressing that one melee attack strike over and over. The pathetic damage output of the opponents is automatically healed away by the automatically generated lifegain, and in the worst case that faery pet will heal some too. I need no ability but one melee strike. When I want to, I can also use a ranged spell or a debuffing melee strike, but they are not required. I can do perfectly well without them. All I have to do is run from mob to mob, and press 1 until it's dead. I know I can't die unless I do something really stupid, I know it doesn't matter what I do, as long as I keep using my melee strike. Yes, for some classes it might be slightly different, but not much.
I know I know. In many MMORPGs, the risk of dying doesn't exist outside PvP or raid content.
You just ain't supposed to die. The content exists there to give you something to do to level up. It's not there to pose any risk of you. Quests don't reward you for your great play, your cunning strategies, smart distribution of talent points and clever use of your abilities, but simply for the time invested. There ain't a difficulty to speak of. The time required is the only thing that plays a role regarding quests.
But that's what many MMORPGs are about, so no surprises there.
If I want exilharating combat, with surprises, where I have to use my skills the best I can. Where I have to use my cooldown-skills and maybe scrolls and potions at exactly the right time. Where I have to keep moving, watch out for things happening, pay attention to special debuffs and scary abilities. Where I might lose barely, ressurrect my character and charge back into battle to try again, or where my character stands victoriously over the oppoents corpse with just a few lifepoints left... Then I got to look somewhere else. Where? I don't know.
I think anyone that actually thinks Rift will be a massive long term success obviously didn't play Warhammer. Everything about this games scream Warhammer and at the end of the day its just bad wow.
That is what I keep coming back to, Warhammer. It seems the industry is on a quest to figure out how to make public quests good. They know static pastures of puppets standing there for you to whack at this level, the pasture over there for the next leve, is insulting. They are trying to get away from that and it's x of x roots, but they still have to figure out how to nail really fun public quests. Up next Guild Wars 2. Will they nail it???
It is not about risk. You do not want risk if you are playing for long periods of time. You want mildly paced relaxing combat. That is fine and reasonable for MMO.
But there is always lag in MMOs, WoW hides the lag, EQ2 incorporates the lag, EvE expects and copes with several seconds of lagspike. Every asian MMO hides it behind flashy effects. But after years and years of this development companies still release titles that cannot match old classic in the very basics.
They also very well know the selling points, Rifts and several class trees, will not fly in the end. Those features make the game different but not better, so you are expected to try out of curiosity but not stay for quality. So try it and have fun but do not tell us how it is good when it is not.
As for different combat system. There are several very succesfull MMOs with different combat that should be very apparent to anyone who takes one look at the market, but they have so little in common it is hard to synthetise your own uncreative clone from them, so investors go after WoW - only to fail because they cannot compete, they cannot even match basic parameters of seven year old technology.
I agree with the OP, but imo the game over all is pretty good. I got multiple melee classes to 20+ (not much of a caster player) and my only real problem was the combat. It felt very slow to me both in PVE and PVP. Not sure what it is could be that I haven't really played a MMO now for about a year.
What I was surprised about though was the dual class concept. I have disliked this in previous games I've played, however, in Rift it was actually put together in a way you can effectively use 2 or all 3 lines without completely gimping yourself. I still found myself sticking to only 2 of the 3 trees I picked. Only because I wanted to keep my main line at my level while putting my extra points into a class that I think would have supported it the most.
One thing that would be nice to have in the Rift combat skills would be chains, like the ones that are in Vanguard. Once a specific ability crits it opens up a chain of abilities that can be executed one by one until it either is complete or one ability misses.
I agree. Something a little different from the normal facerolling we see.
no aiming required. Apart from looking in the general direction of the opponent, you don't have to aim. Which means you don't have to pay attention to your point of view.
no movement required. Mobs you fight rarely move. They charge you and use their melee abilities, or stay where they are and use their ranged abilities. Which means, you don't have to pay attention to your position.
no danger. There is no actual strategy required to kill mobs your level. You can activate your abilities randomly and they'd still die. Which means you don't have to pay attention to which skills are used at what situation
no surprises. If I fight a mob, I know that nothing special will happen. I get some minor damage, maybe some debuffs which vanish after some seconds, and that's it. And that makes the mobs exchangable. It's completly irrelevant which mob I fight, since they are all the same anyway.
All that combined means: you don't have to pay attention at all.
When I run around with my melee cleric, and got the typical buffs on her, I can just keep pressing that one melee attack strike over and over. The pathetic damage output of the opponents is automatically healed away by the automatically generated lifegain, and in the worst case that faery pet will heal some too. I need no ability but one melee strike. When I want to, I can also use a ranged spell or a debuffing melee strike, but they are not required. I can do perfectly well without them. All I have to do is run from mob to mob, and press 1 until it's dead. I know I can't die unless I do something really stupid, I know it doesn't matter what I do, as long as I keep using my melee strike. Yes, for some classes it might be slightly different, but not much.
I know I know. In many MMORPGs, the risk of dying doesn't exist outside PvP or raid content.
You just ain't supposed to die. The content exists there to give you something to do to level up. It's not there to pose any risk of you. Quests don't reward you for your great play, your cunning strategies, smart distribution of talent points and clever use of your abilities, but simply for the time invested. There ain't a difficulty to speak of. The time required is the only thing that plays a role regarding quests.
But that's what many MMORPGs are about, so no surprises there.
If I want exilharating combat, with surprises, where I have to use my skills the best I can. Where I have to use my cooldown-skills and maybe scrolls and potions at exactly the right time. Where I have to keep moving, watch out for things happening, pay attention to special debuffs and scary abilities. Where I might lose barely, ressurrect my character and charge back into battle to try again, or where my character stands victoriously over the oppoents corpse with just a few lifepoints left... Then I got to look somewhere else. Where? I don't know.
That wasn't my experience. Well, maybe at level 5 it was. By level 12 or so if my warrior didn't use the opener, interim and finisher moves correctly then I wouldn't survive some encounters.
no aiming required. Apart from looking in the general direction of the opponent, you don't have to aim. Which means you don't have to pay attention to your point of view.
no movement required. Mobs you fight rarely move. They charge you and use their melee abilities, or stay where they are and use their ranged abilities. Which means, you don't have to pay attention to your position.
no danger. There is no actual strategy required to kill mobs your level. You can activate your abilities randomly and they'd still die. Which means you don't have to pay attention to which skills are used at what situation
no surprises. If I fight a mob, I know that nothing special will happen. I get some minor damage, maybe some debuffs which vanish after some seconds, and that's it. And that makes the mobs exchangable. It's completly irrelevant which mob I fight, since they are all the same anyway.
All that combined means: you don't have to pay attention at all.
When I run around with my melee cleric, and got the typical buffs on her, I can just keep pressing that one melee attack strike over and over. The pathetic damage output of the opponents is automatically healed away by the automatically generated lifegain, and in the worst case that faery pet will heal some too. I need no ability but one melee strike. When I want to, I can also use a ranged spell or a debuffing melee strike, but they are not required. I can do perfectly well without them. All I have to do is run from mob to mob, and press 1 until it's dead. I know I can't die unless I do something really stupid, I know it doesn't matter what I do, as long as I keep using my melee strike. Yes, for some classes it might be slightly different, but not much.
I know I know. In many MMORPGs, the risk of dying doesn't exist outside PvP or raid content.
You just ain't supposed to die. The content exists there to give you something to do to level up. It's not there to pose any risk of you. Quests don't reward you for your great play, your cunning strategies, smart distribution of talent points and clever use of your abilities, but simply for the time invested. There ain't a difficulty to speak of. The time required is the only thing that plays a role regarding quests.
But that's what many MMORPGs are about, so no surprises there.
If I want exilharating combat, with surprises, where I have to use my skills the best I can. Where I have to use my cooldown-skills and maybe scrolls and potions at exactly the right time. Where I have to keep moving, watch out for things happening, pay attention to special debuffs and scary abilities. Where I might lose barely, ressurrect my character and charge back into battle to try again, or where my character stands victoriously over the oppoents corpse with just a few lifepoints left... Then I got to look somewhere else. Where? I don't know.
That wasn't my experience. Well, maybe at level 5 it was. By level 12 or so if my warrior didn't use the opener, interim and finisher moves correctly then I wouldn't survive some encounters.
Really? because on my mage, at level 22, I could literally my my face on the keyboard and still win most encounters, except for the elite ones, of course. Same with my level 16 cleric. Obviously both of those characters had an optimal rotation of skills but it wasn't nessessary to use them.
PvP is a different matter but as far as PvE goes, there isn't much strategy required.
The combat is pretty boring. It's like almost every other MMO in that there's very little skill in playing once you know the ideal hotkey combination for the variety of battles you'll face. There's a little micro added as you continue leveling, and there will certainly be a teamwork factor for high end raids (PvE and PvP). But in the end I can usually play inefficiently without it drastically affecting the outcome of a battle. It's not hard to keep my DoTs up and running and then use the appropriate high damage attacks.
Trion has done well creating content for rifts, quests, and PvP. But ultimately I feel like I'm playing to advance my character and not because I enjoy playing the game itself. If I don't actually enjoy what I'm doing I am going to lose heart pretty quickly. I'll continue with the rest of the betas but because of generic MMO combat this will likely be yet another MMO I pass on.
combat, general animations, and the fact male models look terrible in the game. Its like the development team spent all the time on the female models. I just couldnt get into the world.
combat, general animations, and the fact male models look terrible in the game. Its like the development team spent all the time on the female models. I just couldnt get into the world.
I find it phunnie that most males find most game's male avatars look terrible, even though most of them look just like, and move just like what you would see if you looked in the mirror IRL - well minus 50+ pounds anyway. :P
Oh and for the record, yeah I hate almost all MMO male avatars myself, cause they look terrible and move like freaks.
On topic though, I find Rift combat is as boring or as dynamic as you are willing to make it. If you are a boring player behind the keys who never challenges yourself, then a simple 2 key approach will work for you. But if you want to make the most out of ALL of your abilities it can be very engaging and dynamic. Just like the linear nature of the game over all, if you only want to ride the rails then you can, but if you want to jump off the rails and do something else, well it can be a very big and non-stop action world as well.
On topic though, I find Rift combat is as boring or as dynamic as you are willing to make it. If you are a boring player behind the keys who never challenges yourself, then a simple 2 key approach will work for you. But if you want to make the most out of ALL of your abilities it can be very engaging and dynamic. Just like the linear nature of the game over all, if you only want to ride the rails then you can, but if you want to jump off the rails and do something else, well it can be a very big and non-stop action world as well.
The thing is with some souls not only is 12221222 the easiest, it is 'optimal'. That is a bit of an exageeration and some souls that are more complex than others but the combat does tend towards simplistic for a good portion of skills.
On topic though, I find Rift combat is as boring or as dynamic as you are willing to make it. If you are a boring player behind the keys who never challenges yourself, then a simple 2 key approach will work for you. But if you want to make the most out of ALL of your abilities it can be very engaging and dynamic. Just like the linear nature of the game over all, if you only want to ride the rails then you can, but if you want to jump off the rails and do something else, well it can be a very big and non-stop action world as well.
The thing is with some souls not only is 12221222 the easiest, it is 'optimal'. That is a bit of an exageeration and some souls that are more complex than others but the combat does tend towards simplistic for a good portion of skills.
Even though I can see how it may be possible to do just that 12221222 combo method, I do not see any logic in doing it that way other than lazy. If you actually look at what all those skills do, and think, just for a couple seconds, it becomes obvious why you should do far more than 12221222. Really, how lazy do you have to be to not want to PLAY a character in an MMORPG? Because just doing that really is just that. A warrior who has 20 years experience is NEVER going to just swing his sword one way all the time, ever, and never change that. Especially when he has mastered the kata and has 30 more efficient moves at his disposal.
I guess if all you want to do is the bare minimum to get by in life, then sure, why not carry that over into your game play style. Thats my point anyway, if you want to make it boring you can make it boring right. But the point still stands, just because someone comes on here and calls a games combat (any game) boring, it may not be the game thats boring, it may just be how that person plays the game. In the case of Rift, where it allows you to be as lazy as you want to be and 'get by', that really is most likely the case on the critism we see here.
Oh, and just curious here as I have tried all four callings and any number of sould combinations so far (have all four with all 9 on each along with 2-3 builds on each), and I still haven't found a single combo that would be using half thier potential with less than a 6 move combat chain. What ones are you talking about where you could get an optimal combat style off less?
Only managed level 20 in Beta but yes the combat felt dull and uninspired a lot like War if you ask me. The enemies just aren't very intelligent. As a cleric it looks like impossible to run out of mana I've yet to meditate for mana regain.
but the soul and rift system is well done. Thinking I'll give the game a try at least the free month but only if we get to see the endgame content during Beta.
lvl 1 - 20 weren't that impressive AI and open world technically.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
On topic though, I find Rift combat is as boring or as dynamic as you are willing to make it. If you are a boring player behind the keys who never challenges yourself, then a simple 2 key approach will work for you. But if you want to make the most out of ALL of your abilities it can be very engaging and dynamic. Just like the linear nature of the game over all, if you only want to ride the rails then you can, but if you want to jump off the rails and do something else, well it can be a very big and non-stop action world as well.
The thing is with some souls not only is 12221222 the easiest, it is 'optimal'. That is a bit of an exageeration and some souls that are more complex than others but the combat does tend towards simplistic for a good portion of skills.
Even though I can see how it may be possible to do just that 12221222 combo method, I do not see any logic in doing it that way other than lazy. If you actually look at what all those skills do, and think, just for a couple seconds, it becomes obvious why you should do far more than 12221222. Really, how lazy do you have to be to not want to PLAY a character in an MMORPG? Because just doing that really is just that. A warrior who has 20 years experience is NEVER going to just swing his sword one way all the time, ever, and never change that. Especially when he has mastered the kata and has 30 more efficient moves at his disposal.
I guess if all you want to do is the bare minimum to get by in life, then sure, why not carry that over into your game play style. Thats my point anyway, if you want to make it boring you can make it boring right. But the point still stands, just because someone comes on here and calls a games combat (any game) boring, it may not be the game thats boring, it may just be how that person plays the game. In the case of Rift, where it allows you to be as lazy as you want to be and 'get by', that really is most likely the case on the critism we see here.
Oh, and just curious here as I have tried all four callings and any number of sould combinations so far (have all four with all 9 on each along with 2-3 builds on each), and I still haven't found a single combo that would be using half thier potential with less than a 6 move combat chain. What ones are you talking about where you could get an optimal combat style off less?
You definitely did miss his point, which was that the simple rotations in Rift are also the best, most effective use of your spells. Take a level 20 justicar, for example. Whether you are tanking or dealing some damage, you will only be use the following: Censure (15 second cooldown), Bolt of Radiance (8 sec CD), and Strike of Judgement (no CD). All 3 of these are instant cast spells. Censure deals damage, applies a dot, and increases the effect of your subsequent light spells. Bolt of Radiance is simply your most damaging spell. Strike of Judgement deals less damage but is spammable. All other damaging abilities from other trees become inconsequential because they all do less damage after you have Censure up. Thus, your rotation becomes a simple, boring, and yes, optimal 321111112111111321111112111111 etc.
Things can become more fun if your healer is bad and you have to toss out some support heals, which I always do anyway just because not doing so is just too boring.
Comments
MMORPGs as a genre has evolved a little but the main evolution that has lead to boring combat comes from the fact that people tend to solo more these days. In the old days of Everquest you played in groups and your boring pressing of spells or skills were not so noticeable as it involved group dynamics and being on your toes for bad pulls and massive training that can happen.
Nowadays we tend to solo which is fine but the same combat that used to have more depth when you were in groups becomes shallower because you get into a routine of spells or skills and keep using them to clear quests. The fact is that you notice the way you play now because you are only focussing on yourself. You are interacting less with others. If we played more with other people this factor wouldn't bother one so much.
This is where the rifts come in.I think the RvR and perhaps rift fighting will help the boredom of the combat. By participating in rifts and PvP we might be able to forget the routine combat. More and more games are falling prey to this general sense of ennui that is causing people to think that the genre needs a huge combat vamp when what it needs is more reasons to take your mind off the combat. When I used to play in the battlegrounds in WoW I used to simply love it and the combat was scintillating. Soon as I was soloing not so much.
/sigh, you probably should have actually read what I said, before that long ass rant.
Heheh, I was going to respond with something similar. "I think you need to re-read their statement more carefully, and pay attention to the quotes"... Figured someone might have already done so by now.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
One thing that would be nice to have in the Rift combat skills would be chains, like the ones that are in Vanguard. Once a specific ability crits it opens up a chain of abilities that can be executed one by one until it either is complete or one ability misses.
I ve done the same thing mate i m playing dc with all it's flaws instead of playing rift.
Yeah dc is more fun than rift but i want that damn swtor
I agree, the combat blows, for several reasons.
no aiming required. Apart from looking in the general direction of the opponent, you don't have to aim. Which means you don't have to pay attention to your point of view.
no movement required. Mobs you fight rarely move. They charge you and use their melee abilities, or stay where they are and use their ranged abilities. Which means, you don't have to pay attention to your position.
no danger. There is no actual strategy required to kill mobs your level. You can activate your abilities randomly and they'd still die. Which means you don't have to pay attention to which skills are used at what situation
no surprises. If I fight a mob, I know that nothing special will happen. I get some minor damage, maybe some debuffs which vanish after some seconds, and that's it. And that makes the mobs exchangable. It's completly irrelevant which mob I fight, since they are all the same anyway.
All that combined means: you don't have to pay attention at all.
When I run around with my melee cleric, and got the typical buffs on her, I can just keep pressing that one melee attack strike over and over. The pathetic damage output of the opponents is automatically healed away by the automatically generated lifegain, and in the worst case that faery pet will heal some too. I need no ability but one melee strike. When I want to, I can also use a ranged spell or a debuffing melee strike, but they are not required. I can do perfectly well without them. All I have to do is run from mob to mob, and press 1 until it's dead. I know I can't die unless I do something really stupid, I know it doesn't matter what I do, as long as I keep using my melee strike. Yes, for some classes it might be slightly different, but not much.
I know I know. In many MMORPGs, the risk of dying doesn't exist outside PvP or raid content.
You just ain't supposed to die. The content exists there to give you something to do to level up. It's not there to pose any risk of you. Quests don't reward you for your great play, your cunning strategies, smart distribution of talent points and clever use of your abilities, but simply for the time invested. There ain't a difficulty to speak of. The time required is the only thing that plays a role regarding quests.
But that's what many MMORPGs are about, so no surprises there.
If I want exilharating combat, with surprises, where I have to use my skills the best I can. Where I have to use my cooldown-skills and maybe scrolls and potions at exactly the right time. Where I have to keep moving, watch out for things happening, pay attention to special debuffs and scary abilities. Where I might lose barely, ressurrect my character and charge back into battle to try again, or where my character stands victoriously over the oppoents corpse with just a few lifepoints left... Then I got to look somewhere else. Where? I don't know.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
That is what I keep coming back to, Warhammer. It seems the industry is on a quest to figure out how to make public quests good. They know static pastures of puppets standing there for you to whack at this level, the pasture over there for the next leve, is insulting. They are trying to get away from that and it's x of x roots, but they still have to figure out how to nail really fun public quests. Up next Guild Wars 2. Will they nail it???
It is not about risk. You do not want risk if you are playing for long periods of time. You want mildly paced relaxing combat. That is fine and reasonable for MMO.
But there is always lag in MMOs, WoW hides the lag, EQ2 incorporates the lag, EvE expects and copes with several seconds of lagspike. Every asian MMO hides it behind flashy effects. But after years and years of this development companies still release titles that cannot match old classic in the very basics.
They also very well know the selling points, Rifts and several class trees, will not fly in the end. Those features make the game different but not better, so you are expected to try out of curiosity but not stay for quality. So try it and have fun but do not tell us how it is good when it is not.
As for different combat system. There are several very succesfull MMOs with different combat that should be very apparent to anyone who takes one look at the market, but they have so little in common it is hard to synthetise your own uncreative clone from them, so investors go after WoW - only to fail because they cannot compete, they cannot even match basic parameters of seven year old technology.
I agree with the OP, but imo the game over all is pretty good. I got multiple melee classes to 20+ (not much of a caster player) and my only real problem was the combat. It felt very slow to me both in PVE and PVP. Not sure what it is could be that I haven't really played a MMO now for about a year.
What I was surprised about though was the dual class concept. I have disliked this in previous games I've played, however, in Rift it was actually put together in a way you can effectively use 2 or all 3 lines without completely gimping yourself. I still found myself sticking to only 2 of the 3 trees I picked. Only because I wanted to keep my main line at my level while putting my extra points into a class that I think would have supported it the most.
I agree. Something a little different from the normal facerolling we see.
That wasn't my experience. Well, maybe at level 5 it was. By level 12 or so if my warrior didn't use the opener, interim and finisher moves correctly then I wouldn't survive some encounters.
Really? because on my mage, at level 22, I could literally my my face on the keyboard and still win most encounters, except for the elite ones, of course. Same with my level 16 cleric. Obviously both of those characters had an optimal rotation of skills but it wasn't nessessary to use them.
PvP is a different matter but as far as PvE goes, there isn't much strategy required.
The combat is pretty boring. It's like almost every other MMO in that there's very little skill in playing once you know the ideal hotkey combination for the variety of battles you'll face. There's a little micro added as you continue leveling, and there will certainly be a teamwork factor for high end raids (PvE and PvP). But in the end I can usually play inefficiently without it drastically affecting the outcome of a battle. It's not hard to keep my DoTs up and running and then use the appropriate high damage attacks.
Trion has done well creating content for rifts, quests, and PvP. But ultimately I feel like I'm playing to advance my character and not because I enjoy playing the game itself. If I don't actually enjoy what I'm doing I am going to lose heart pretty quickly. I'll continue with the rest of the betas but because of generic MMO combat this will likely be yet another MMO I pass on.
combat, general animations, and the fact male models look terrible in the game. Its like the development team spent all the time on the female models. I just couldnt get into the world.
I find it phunnie that most males find most game's male avatars look terrible, even though most of them look just like, and move just like what you would see if you looked in the mirror IRL - well minus 50+ pounds anyway. :P
Oh and for the record, yeah I hate almost all MMO male avatars myself, cause they look terrible and move like freaks.
On topic though, I find Rift combat is as boring or as dynamic as you are willing to make it. If you are a boring player behind the keys who never challenges yourself, then a simple 2 key approach will work for you. But if you want to make the most out of ALL of your abilities it can be very engaging and dynamic. Just like the linear nature of the game over all, if you only want to ride the rails then you can, but if you want to jump off the rails and do something else, well it can be a very big and non-stop action world as well.
The thing is with some souls not only is 12221222 the easiest, it is 'optimal'. That is a bit of an exageeration and some souls that are more complex than others but the combat does tend towards simplistic for a good portion of skills.
Even though I can see how it may be possible to do just that 12221222 combo method, I do not see any logic in doing it that way other than lazy. If you actually look at what all those skills do, and think, just for a couple seconds, it becomes obvious why you should do far more than 12221222. Really, how lazy do you have to be to not want to PLAY a character in an MMORPG? Because just doing that really is just that. A warrior who has 20 years experience is NEVER going to just swing his sword one way all the time, ever, and never change that. Especially when he has mastered the kata and has 30 more efficient moves at his disposal.
I guess if all you want to do is the bare minimum to get by in life, then sure, why not carry that over into your game play style. Thats my point anyway, if you want to make it boring you can make it boring right. But the point still stands, just because someone comes on here and calls a games combat (any game) boring, it may not be the game thats boring, it may just be how that person plays the game. In the case of Rift, where it allows you to be as lazy as you want to be and 'get by', that really is most likely the case on the critism we see here.
Oh, and just curious here as I have tried all four callings and any number of sould combinations so far (have all four with all 9 on each along with 2-3 builds on each), and I still haven't found a single combo that would be using half thier potential with less than a 6 move combat chain. What ones are you talking about where you could get an optimal combat style off less?
You miss the point....it's nothing to do with lazy or industrious it is optimal.
Only managed level 20 in Beta but yes the combat felt dull and uninspired a lot like War if you ask me. The enemies just aren't very intelligent. As a cleric it looks like impossible to run out of mana I've yet to meditate for mana regain.
but the soul and rift system is well done. Thinking I'll give the game a try at least the free month but only if we get to see the endgame content during Beta.
lvl 1 - 20 weren't that impressive AI and open world technically.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
You definitely did miss his point, which was that the simple rotations in Rift are also the best, most effective use of your spells. Take a level 20 justicar, for example. Whether you are tanking or dealing some damage, you will only be use the following: Censure (15 second cooldown), Bolt of Radiance (8 sec CD), and Strike of Judgement (no CD). All 3 of these are instant cast spells. Censure deals damage, applies a dot, and increases the effect of your subsequent light spells. Bolt of Radiance is simply your most damaging spell. Strike of Judgement deals less damage but is spammable. All other damaging abilities from other trees become inconsequential because they all do less damage after you have Censure up. Thus, your rotation becomes a simple, boring, and yes, optimal 321111112111111321111112111111 etc.
Things can become more fun if your healer is bad and you have to toss out some support heals, which I always do anyway just because not doing so is just too boring.
not only the combat is boring, the skills , the classes, races are so boring...........
Which FF Character Are You?
At least the combat is better than LOTRO... that's a good point
Otherwise, yeah, it's not just the combat which is "more of the same". The whole game is "more of the same, but in less amount than other games".
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Do the mobs even move in this game? Do they have more animations then walk, stand still?
This game need much more animations and effects, can't see the magic or arrows. Some attacks have animations others don't.
I think they used most of the time on Rifts and they don't work 100%.
I smell AoC. =/
It is funny that combat is so much like WoW and is also sooo boring, so by definition WoW is boring and also looks five years old.
I've seen some mobs fart ... that good enough?