Except I could not care less for PvP, I do not see any point in OP:
Lifeless questing: please, write down EXACTLY how should questing look to make you happy. Exactly ... do not bother why they did wrong so you do not like. Do not blame them, give solutions.
Solo play: love it. Would never play game where I'm constantly forced to looking 1 hour for help to finish stupid quest that prevents me to continue. I'm not against, end game IS based on group play, no problem with that. But while leveling there must be enough players at any time at given area.
Crafting: still busy leveling ... so can not comment in full ... for now mainly gathering.
PVP: as said, could not care less. Really hate how many players are vocal on forums "give me pvp, give me pvp, ue ue ue .... is not balanced ... ue ue ue .... ". Just look which servers are in ANY game in majority. The one that are pvp only ... not worth spending words how they fare.
Paths: im fine with that. Game is great and fun. As altholic I will need to level only 4 times + 4 for other side maybe someday.
All in all ... after years and years ... this is first time after wow I'm literaly sucked in any game. AoC, War, ... could be great. If not for bugs that made them close to implayable. At start but also months after. In Aoc I will be guess once back ... but for sure not War. After my 5th return I was 5th time deeply disappointed by many bugs and problems. Many persist since day 1.
Rift on the other side: never ever in history (and I'm not so young) have not witnessed more smoth and polished gameplay virtually since day 1. I'm amazed by game.
What im enjoying most of them game is the exploration and the pvp. Sure it is imbalaced. The devs already know that. But it gave me the enjoyment that I was having in the early Warhammer Online days. I even met some ex warhammer and aion players in my server. If you dont like questing, take a break. Complete the collection and explore the map, get those artifacts. Theres so much more to do than quest.
And with exploration thats all okay, when you do it the first time. The real Test is the 2nd "Run-through". Any part of the Rift-Landscape wasn't fascinating me at all. Sure some things are well designed, but there was always "something" missing. And with "something" I mean something what got "Soul" in it. Landscape-Design is a majormajor Part in an MMO*.
But I remember Games and yes this includes Wow 2005, where this is all different. When I for example first saw Azshara or Tanaris or Silithus and was massively blown away by just standing there and enjoying the Landscape.
Call me Freak/Nerd whatever, but in my first Year I played Wow 2005 till 2006 I came back to these Spots over and over again. Even now I have the Theme-Music on my Ipod. Can you imagine this? This is fascination. Everytime I listen to it, I'm getting ported back to the initial Experience. This is what Games want. And when I check Youtube for Videos of these Zones I do see that I'm completely not alone.
Still it's Trion's first MMO, keep it in Mind.
*PS: If anyone reads this - yeah how can I be an Level-Designer? Pure Level-Designer putting stuff together like Lego, not creating in 3DSMAX or progging. Gimme a hint via Message - Thx
My own personal gripe: the landscapes are large enough but they're just too packed with mobs. You understand at once that these are stepped grinding zones and not a real landscape.
That's a very good point. It felt that you were not given a "time to rest" in the middle of your Journey. Be aware the respawn etc
My own personal gripe: the landscapes are large enough but they're just too packed with mobs. You understand at once that these are stepped grinding zones and not a real landscape.
Well, there are safe paths between the mobs which I found was easier in the open areas than forest areas like in the Guardian starter area, plus I read that you're not knocked off your horse that easily anymore. But generally speaking, yeah, Rift has I think the highest mob density of all MMORPG's as far as I've seen.
I think they did it because Rift's world in itself is fairly small, in total only half of a WoW continent like Eastern Kingdoms, so having more mobs everywhere creates a sense of a more dangerous, vaster world.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
You can say that again about the horse updates. Right now if the mobs in question don't have some sort of snare ability they bring me almost to the poin of dying and they still don't dismount me. I don't think that'll remain the same though when the damage debuff you get when you run away from mobs turns into a slow debuff in the soon to be patched game (if it isn't pathed already).
Grey con mobs don't even register me now when I walk in between them. If I tried that in the past I would have a trail of annoying lowbies after me.
Except I could not care less for PvP, I do not see any point in OP:
Lifeless questing: please, write down EXACTLY how should questing look to make you happy. Exactly ... do not bother why they did wrong so you do not like. Do not blame them, give solutions.
As other players already said - wow wotlk and cataclysm expansions improved questing a lot,also for good quests look at lotro story quests,age of conan lv 1-20 and a few quests after that.Rift quest system maybe was ok 5-6 years ago ,around the launch of wow but now it is boring and bland for a lot of people.Other things I disliked about rift :
- invisible walls and small world - i don't know how so many people speak about exploration in rift as being great when the world is so small and invisible walls and too many npcs destroy all feeling of immersion.Finding artifacts all over the world are not what i call exploration ,more like a minigame for collector types.
- lack of great music combined with beautiful areas - i played until lv 25 in beta and i didn't saw once an area which made me stop and admire it while listening to music in game - nothing like conall's valley in aoc or first time running at night in commonlands or antonica (eq2),the shire or old forest (before the nerf) in lotro or even first time i went to stormwind or darnassus in wow when you enter the city and the music starts.
- limited number of zones for leveling - you don't like a zone,too bad because there is no other choice for you
- no housing or other things to help rp,limited number of emotes,no appearance tab
- slow combat,not so good spell effects (probably because i like aoc and dcuo type of combat,even wow has a more fun combat)
So in the end maybe rift is ok for players not interested in questing or crafting or big worlds to explore but i didn't find anything interested enough in game to make me subscribe.I still have to thank Tirion developers for letting me try beta so i didn't waste the money on buying the game and making me give warhammer another try (which is also lacking a lot of things and has more bugs than rift but at least rvr there is fun)
I'd like to comment on the invisible walls bit. There are no comments on them because there aren't any in the live game. The ones that were there in the beta were meant to restrict you from entering zones that were restricted in beta.
Regarding music. For some reason for me there wasn't any music in beta besides certain places. Maybe the triggers were not properly set. Regardless, music is fine now. I do lose music sometimes if I alt-tab repeatedly from the game, but it does come up if I engage-disengage in combat or change a zone.
Also Cataclysm questing? You mean the changes made to the quests prior to the level 80-85 zones I hope, right? Because they 80-85 zones have the worse possible quest design they could have made for an MMO. For a single player game, sure, it's passable and a decent one time pass gameplay experience. Nothing spectacular though, DA:O does the linear questing a lot better, has better graphics and a more coherent story (haven't played DA:O 2).
I'd like to comment on the invisible walls bit. There are no comments on them because there aren't any in the live game. The ones that were there in the beta were meant to restrict you from entering zones that were restricted in beta.
Also Cataclysm questing? You mean the changes made to the quests prior to the level 80-85 zones I hope, right? Because they 80-85 zones have the worse possible quest design they could have made for an MMO. For a single player game, sure, it's passable and a decent one time pass gameplay experience. Nothing spectacular though, DA:O does the linear questing a lot better, has better graphics and a more coherent story (haven't played DA:O 2).
Maybe you are right but the invisible walls i hit while in beta were not on roads to other zones - for example in stonefield i got on some cliff and i wanted to go down,if i remember well i was able to see the sea far away but because of that invisible wall i was not able to reach it.Same thing annoyed me in other games too - aoc was one of the worse ,you could see beautiful areas but you were not able to reach them.I like to be able to go from one zone to another without being forced to follow the roads but sadly many games use terrain or invisible walls to force you to use certain points to enter new zones.
About wow - i was speaking for lv 1-60,i didn't even bought cataclysm.I played one character from 10-60 and another from 1-30 in the new zones and while i liked the quests a lot i also hated how blizz changed the talent trees,the lack of danger while questing and a lot of other things so was no need to buy the expansion pack or subscribe to wow anymore.I agree with the da:o comment and this is why i wait for sw:tor,i always liked bioware way of questing and their use of moral decisions to advance your character.
That's because the game has no entry points to different zones. You can practically enter a different zone from any point you like and ignore the roads completely.
Well, if you can climb the mountains that is. Some zones have easier mountain access than others. For example you can enter Scarlet Gorge from practically any zone, but the canyon design makes that zone and climbing to other zones in general difficult.
My own personal gripe: the landscapes are large enough but they're just too packed with mobs. You understand at once that these are stepped grinding zones and not a real landscape.
grinding zones are a bit disappointing as are dull quests. I think the Ascended Soul system also is going to be a huge pain for Trion, because while they can probably patch in more lively and interesting quest content balancing a complex class system for PvP never happens...look at WoW, Blizzard have never been able to make it balanced with a simpler class talent system.
I think for the game review bill should wait a month or two till Rift is beyond its launch, and see if people are still playing the game in large numbers or are they back at WoW and other established MMOs or waiting for up and coming titles like SW:TOR and GW:2 which may be more original. Remember any game that advertises itself with slogans clearly aimed at the WoW crowd is likely, and for better or worse, a generic game that derives a lot from the WoW type of fantasy mmo.
The questing is not that bad. I think its an improvment over WoW system. A lot of there quest sprgression feels more like a guided experence then always get quests here and go over there and kill things to return back to same place to hand them in. Often the quests you pick up have to deal with the area you picked up the quests.
I love the crafting system. Sure its much like crafting in WoW but they did take it to the next level and add some nice twists. Also I have yet to make an item that was usless. I have gotten some really nice drop items and when I do a crafting sesion my player made items are always better.
As for balance, do you want options or do you want cookie cutter classes. The more cookie cutter the classes become the easyer it is to balance. I love the uniqueness of the soul system. Just means you need to be a smart player and buy a build just for PvP and think about what you want your PvP build to be. This system is not for the weak of heart. It takes skill and thought to make a PvP char.
Most of the people I talk to having problems in PvP have taken there PvE char into PvP with no thought to picking up talent points that will make them live in PvP. Nore do they have a PvP set of gear leaning more towards HP. People expect to take their fire mage into PvP and not die like the glass cannon they are. Grow up and make a build thats just for PvP and pick skills that will keep you alive.
finally lots of ppl admited that questing in Rift is not fun at all (why you guys waited until William Murphy posted the article to admit its true?)... After seeing how generic (yet boring) was the questing since beta 1... i smelled this article was coming some day to this forum
People were saying the questing was lackluster since first closed beta. In fact I think most of the posts you will find will range from "same old/same old" to a few words that I shouldn't post as they probably break they rules of this forum.
Suffice it to say no one has every gushed about Rift's Questing.
Rifts draw is not the quests. I would never recommend this game because of the quests. It's the Rifts and events and invasions that (to me) are the real fun.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I think people are missing the point about why quests feel like the same old thing. It's because there aren't many other ways, if any, that work. Rift at least had mini-camps along the way so the run back to a quest giver was never to bad, as opposed to a single quest hub in each area. But honestly, the reason people find themselves just clicking accept and proceeding is because they are in a rush. If you stop, and take the time to read the quests, you get more involved and feel like part of a story, and it breaks up the continuous grind a bit.
Add in the rifts, footholds and invasions along the way, while queing for some pvp, and solo questing really isn't a boring grind, its something to do between high involvement rifts and pvp. You can not look at just one aspect of the game and say its boring, when that part of the game is intertwined with other aspects. Ie questing with rifts and invasions and exploration, as opposed to crafting which is done standing still in a town.
But as far as crafting, yes I do believe that all you do is make worthless item after worthless item until max level. Someone needs to develop a system that is not as random as EQ2 or time consuming as Vanguard, but at the same time not as boring as WoW. And for heaven's sake, please make crafted items worth it. It's not hard to add crafting dailies that reward people with an item that when you do a few dailies, gives you an item that can make dungeon grade loot. Start it out with like 2 dailies at low level up to 14-21 at higher levels, and then crafters can feel like its worthwhile to craft.
And one last thing on questing, I really wish that devs would finally stop sending you out to places multiple times and more importantly if I go out the first time and kill the boss in that area, when I come back don't say, "Now I need you to go kill the boss.", instead say, "Hey, I was going to ask you to take care of that guy, but you already did. Thanks!". Warhammer had promised this but didn't come through, and its about time a developer did.
As a 300 weaponsmith in the game i find checklist crafting to be a delight right now Getting recipes is one of the biggest pieces of depth the crafting system has. I can say for a certainty no one has every recipe because of how the system is setup. Its hard enough to get the recipes for certain items. Espeically at high ranks. Pristine distliliate cinerium bars. Its not easy. If it was more involved it'd be an even more difficult process. After hunting these items down you dont reallly WANT to do more than hit a button. (Price of minor catalyst. 10 plat right now. Probably not changing. Pristine distliate 1 plat might change.)
Leveling paths: *BZZT* Sorry not quite accurate. While leveling via questing is the STANDARD way it is not the only way. If you wanted to you could slam rifts shut all day long with your friends. If you're concerned about solo. You could hit warfronts all day long. This is addressed in the 5 things rift does right story. Two factions are what will make this game work from a population standpoint.
Questing: I find issue with this only because the STORY is what carries a lot of this. Following the story Is what drove me to follow the path of Uriel through the game. (Even though that quest line is bugged to hell) It Drove me through Shimmersand not once but twice. An ending of a story that i began to love at level 30 let loose an event that could shake the Defiant V Guardian situation to its core. I'm trying not to give spoilers. For this game, the story is what carries the quests. At least for me.
Though I am all for a smooth, polished game with little problems on launch, everything I've read so far about Rift seems to be just another variant of what has become the norm of mmorpg game design.
I like a challenge, I like to feel that when I do/achieve something that I get a sense of reward. That I have to use a bit of brain power and some luck to pull something off. WoW was never much for the risk=reward concept from the start, that said they totally chipped away at it with each expansion and patch so that now there is no risk/reward.
I am waiting for a game that brings back that risk/reward concept and yet is polished, indepth and a place where I will be happy to come and immerse myself for years at a time. I had alot of hope because I know/knew Scott Hartman from long ago when he was a GM for Gemstone III back on GEnie (in the early 1990's), I think I let myself get a bit too excited though that Rift would bring back the sense of discovery, risk/reward and more open ended gaming.
The questing is not that bad. I think its an improvment over WoW system. A lot of there quest sprgression feels more like a guided experence then always get quests here and go over there and kill things to return back to same place to hand them in. Often the quests you pick up have to deal with the area you picked up the quests.
I love the crafting system. Sure its much like crafting in WoW but they did take it to the next level and add some nice twists. Also I have yet to make an item that was usless. I have gotten some really nice drop items and when I do a crafting sesion my player made items are always better.
As for balance, do you want options or do you want cookie cutter classes. The more cookie cutter the classes become the easyer it is to balance. I love the uniqueness of the soul system. Just means you need to be a smart player and buy a build just for PvP and think about what you want your PvP build to be. This system is not for the weak of heart. It takes skill and thought to make a PvP char.
It's an improvement over vanilla WoW maybe, but not Cata WoW. Though there are some nice exceptions like a couple of the university quests, Rift has the same stuff you saw in vanilla, except you return to the same areas more often.
Cata WoW has alot more variance regarding what it takes to complete quests, and what happens after you do. You rebuild a flying machine through a number of quests, then take that machine to complete another objective, for example.
Still others don't ever require you to return. In some cases you can't, because something "catacalysmic" has occurred and your quest giver is gone.
I think people are missing the point about why quests feel like the same old thing. It's because there aren't many other ways, if any, that work.
Of course there are other Questing-Methods than just...
a) bring item x to person y
b) escort xyz
c) kill x amount of y-type of monster
d) "discover" / "scout" location x (by just going there and get your free xp)
e) craft x number of items using y (alchemy, weapon/armor-smithing etcpp) and bring them to npc z
Now let me think for 10seconds and I can give you a ton of new (or less used) Ideas and I'm not even a Dev:
1) Talk to Person x and convince her to do y and then kill Person x for doing y. Talk to Person z that Person x done y. Or Betrayal, kill the Quest Npc and get along with the Person you should actually have killed. Or just copy the whole Fable 3 Concept and improve it ;-)
2) A whole bunch of Baldurs-Gate like Chat-Dialogues which you actually HAVE TO READ in order to get to your Goal (whatever that might be then)
3) Sneak up to Person x1 and x2, hide behind y and listen what they talk about. either kill them or talk to Npc z (from Age of Conan)
4) Study different Books in a Library - omg noe, reading againn! - to find out what happened to Person x 100years ago / Study Corpses of mumified Victims (etc). This be a hint what happened to Person y which you have to find / discover Person z's hideout / secret Society (etc)
5) Raise a Pet. Train him skills, at which the Pet suxx hard at the Beginning. Plant a Tree which takes some time: An acricultural-crafting Idea. This can all be part of a bigger Quest.
6) For every Quest, give the Player the Option how he wants to complete it and give him atleast a good/bad/neutral Option!
7) Or hey! Quests do not exist. It's all based on "do what you want / discover what you want" . Then you insert an Oblivion/The Secret World-like Skill-improving system . And get beaten up by Mobs because u were too weak in the first Place but now can whoop their arses (etc)
and this is just an example. but Stuff isn't hard when you actually wan't to do it.
And don't say there are no other Ways. God damnit - IDEAS ARE INFINITE! There IS no CAN'T DO. And your not even talking about Real-Life - talking about a Virtual World where everything can happen!
I like the crafting from EQ2/Vanguard only for the amount of things that can be made, not for the idiotic mini games. crafting in EQ2 is the only time i can take a grey pattern and fail at making it because the computer does bad rolls. i have to use a guild buff and special armor/itmes just to make items 75% of the time for blue patterns.
Rift isnt a PvP game, go play GW if you want balanced PvP.
/my 2 copper
sounds to me like your EQ2 crafting skills your doing it wrong. you spam the incress health of your crafting and only hit other buttons as it proc's you too IE, spell flux or what ever, once you have built up the health of the item by like 10-20+ clicks then you do the incrssd speed and quality alternate, untill finaly its done, you sould end at 100% every time.
Since two of the five bad kind of address the same thing. I've got one that is really bothering me. NO GUILD BANKS or some kind of guild banking system, and no guild housing.
Comments
Except I could not care less for PvP, I do not see any point in OP:
Lifeless questing: please, write down EXACTLY how should questing look to make you happy. Exactly ... do not bother why they did wrong so you do not like. Do not blame them, give solutions.
Solo play: love it. Would never play game where I'm constantly forced to looking 1 hour for help to finish stupid quest that prevents me to continue. I'm not against, end game IS based on group play, no problem with that. But while leveling there must be enough players at any time at given area.
Crafting: still busy leveling ... so can not comment in full ... for now mainly gathering.
PVP: as said, could not care less. Really hate how many players are vocal on forums "give me pvp, give me pvp, ue ue ue .... is not balanced ... ue ue ue .... ". Just look which servers are in ANY game in majority. The one that are pvp only ... not worth spending words how they fare.
Paths: im fine with that. Game is great and fun. As altholic I will need to level only 4 times + 4 for other side maybe someday.
All in all ... after years and years ... this is first time after wow I'm literaly sucked in any game. AoC, War, ... could be great. If not for bugs that made them close to implayable. At start but also months after. In Aoc I will be guess once back ... but for sure not War. After my 5th return I was 5th time deeply disappointed by many bugs and problems. Many persist since day 1.
Rift on the other side: never ever in history (and I'm not so young) have not witnessed more smoth and polished gameplay virtually since day 1. I'm amazed by game.
And with exploration thats all okay, when you do it the first time. The real Test is the 2nd "Run-through". Any part of the Rift-Landscape wasn't fascinating me at all. Sure some things are well designed, but there was always "something" missing. And with "something" I mean something what got "Soul" in it. Landscape-Design is a majormajor Part in an MMO*.
But I remember Games and yes this includes Wow 2005, where this is all different. When I for example first saw Azshara or Tanaris or Silithus and was massively blown away by just standing there and enjoying the Landscape.
Call me Freak/Nerd whatever, but in my first Year I played Wow 2005 till 2006 I came back to these Spots over and over again. Even now I have the Theme-Music on my Ipod. Can you imagine this? This is fascination. Everytime I listen to it, I'm getting ported back to the initial Experience. This is what Games want. And when I check Youtube for Videos of these Zones I do see that I'm completely not alone.
Still it's Trion's first MMO, keep it in Mind.
*PS: If anyone reads this - yeah how can I be an Level-Designer? Pure Level-Designer putting stuff together like Lego, not creating in 3DSMAX or progging. Gimme a hint via Message - Thx
That's a very good point. It felt that you were not given a "time to rest" in the middle of your Journey. Be aware the respawn etc
Well, there are safe paths between the mobs which I found was easier in the open areas than forest areas like in the Guardian starter area, plus I read that you're not knocked off your horse that easily anymore. But generally speaking, yeah, Rift has I think the highest mob density of all MMORPG's as far as I've seen.
I think they did it because Rift's world in itself is fairly small, in total only half of a WoW continent like Eastern Kingdoms, so having more mobs everywhere creates a sense of a more dangerous, vaster world.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
You can say that again about the horse updates. Right now if the mobs in question don't have some sort of snare ability they bring me almost to the poin of dying and they still don't dismount me. I don't think that'll remain the same though when the damage debuff you get when you run away from mobs turns into a slow debuff in the soon to be patched game (if it isn't pathed already).
Grey con mobs don't even register me now when I walk in between them. If I tried that in the past I would have a trail of annoying lowbies after me.
The whole list is about your play style. It is a matter of choice how a person plays and what they get out of a game.
Leave Quest locations on in the minimap and don't read the quest equals boring.
Same with the rest of your so called list.
Just a matter of play style.
As other players already said - wow wotlk and cataclysm expansions improved questing a lot,also for good quests look at lotro story quests,age of conan lv 1-20 and a few quests after that.Rift quest system maybe was ok 5-6 years ago ,around the launch of wow but now it is boring and bland for a lot of people.Other things I disliked about rift :
- invisible walls and small world - i don't know how so many people speak about exploration in rift as being great when the world is so small and invisible walls and too many npcs destroy all feeling of immersion.Finding artifacts all over the world are not what i call exploration ,more like a minigame for collector types.
- lack of great music combined with beautiful areas - i played until lv 25 in beta and i didn't saw once an area which made me stop and admire it while listening to music in game - nothing like conall's valley in aoc or first time running at night in commonlands or antonica (eq2),the shire or old forest (before the nerf) in lotro or even first time i went to stormwind or darnassus in wow when you enter the city and the music starts.
- limited number of zones for leveling - you don't like a zone,too bad because there is no other choice for you
- no housing or other things to help rp,limited number of emotes,no appearance tab
- slow combat,not so good spell effects (probably because i like aoc and dcuo type of combat,even wow has a more fun combat)
So in the end maybe rift is ok for players not interested in questing or crafting or big worlds to explore but i didn't find anything interested enough in game to make me subscribe.I still have to thank Tirion developers for letting me try beta so i didn't waste the money on buying the game and making me give warhammer another try (which is also lacking a lot of things and has more bugs than rift but at least rvr there is fun)
I'd like to comment on the invisible walls bit. There are no comments on them because there aren't any in the live game. The ones that were there in the beta were meant to restrict you from entering zones that were restricted in beta.
Regarding music. For some reason for me there wasn't any music in beta besides certain places. Maybe the triggers were not properly set. Regardless, music is fine now. I do lose music sometimes if I alt-tab repeatedly from the game, but it does come up if I engage-disengage in combat or change a zone.
Also Cataclysm questing? You mean the changes made to the quests prior to the level 80-85 zones I hope, right? Because they 80-85 zones have the worse possible quest design they could have made for an MMO. For a single player game, sure, it's passable and a decent one time pass gameplay experience. Nothing spectacular though, DA:O does the linear questing a lot better, has better graphics and a more coherent story (haven't played DA:O 2).
Maybe you are right but the invisible walls i hit while in beta were not on roads to other zones - for example in stonefield i got on some cliff and i wanted to go down,if i remember well i was able to see the sea far away but because of that invisible wall i was not able to reach it.Same thing annoyed me in other games too - aoc was one of the worse ,you could see beautiful areas but you were not able to reach them.I like to be able to go from one zone to another without being forced to follow the roads but sadly many games use terrain or invisible walls to force you to use certain points to enter new zones.
About wow - i was speaking for lv 1-60,i didn't even bought cataclysm.I played one character from 10-60 and another from 1-30 in the new zones and while i liked the quests a lot i also hated how blizz changed the talent trees,the lack of danger while questing and a lot of other things so was no need to buy the expansion pack or subscribe to wow anymore.I agree with the da:o comment and this is why i wait for sw:tor,i always liked bioware way of questing and their use of moral decisions to advance your character.
That's because the game has no entry points to different zones. You can practically enter a different zone from any point you like and ignore the roads completely.
Well, if you can climb the mountains that is. Some zones have easier mountain access than others. For example you can enter Scarlet Gorge from practically any zone, but the canyon design makes that zone and climbing to other zones in general difficult.
grinding zones are a bit disappointing as are dull quests. I think the Ascended Soul system also is going to be a huge pain for Trion, because while they can probably patch in more lively and interesting quest content balancing a complex class system for PvP never happens...look at WoW, Blizzard have never been able to make it balanced with a simpler class talent system.
I think for the game review bill should wait a month or two till Rift is beyond its launch, and see if people are still playing the game in large numbers or are they back at WoW and other established MMOs or waiting for up and coming titles like SW:TOR and GW:2 which may be more original. Remember any game that advertises itself with slogans clearly aimed at the WoW crowd is likely, and for better or worse, a generic game that derives a lot from the WoW type of fantasy mmo.
Oh and about questing I encountered a horrible Systematic I've never seen so far in any other popular MMO these days:
You had to go into a certain Quest-Location at least twice sometimes. Which dramaticly increases a "grind"-feeling. I think this was a major mistake.
The questing is not that bad. I think its an improvment over WoW system. A lot of there quest sprgression feels more like a guided experence then always get quests here and go over there and kill things to return back to same place to hand them in. Often the quests you pick up have to deal with the area you picked up the quests.
I love the crafting system. Sure its much like crafting in WoW but they did take it to the next level and add some nice twists. Also I have yet to make an item that was usless. I have gotten some really nice drop items and when I do a crafting sesion my player made items are always better.
As for balance, do you want options or do you want cookie cutter classes. The more cookie cutter the classes become the easyer it is to balance. I love the uniqueness of the soul system. Just means you need to be a smart player and buy a build just for PvP and think about what you want your PvP build to be. This system is not for the weak of heart. It takes skill and thought to make a PvP char.
Most of the people I talk to having problems in PvP have taken there PvE char into PvP with no thought to picking up talent points that will make them live in PvP. Nore do they have a PvP set of gear leaning more towards HP. People expect to take their fire mage into PvP and not die like the glass cannon they are. Grow up and make a build thats just for PvP and pick skills that will keep you alive.
People were saying the questing was lackluster since first closed beta. In fact I think most of the posts you will find will range from "same old/same old" to a few words that I shouldn't post as they probably break they rules of this forum.
Suffice it to say no one has every gushed about Rift's Questing.
Rifts draw is not the quests. I would never recommend this game because of the quests. It's the Rifts and events and invasions that (to me) are the real fun.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I think people are missing the point about why quests feel like the same old thing. It's because there aren't many other ways, if any, that work. Rift at least had mini-camps along the way so the run back to a quest giver was never to bad, as opposed to a single quest hub in each area. But honestly, the reason people find themselves just clicking accept and proceeding is because they are in a rush. If you stop, and take the time to read the quests, you get more involved and feel like part of a story, and it breaks up the continuous grind a bit.
Add in the rifts, footholds and invasions along the way, while queing for some pvp, and solo questing really isn't a boring grind, its something to do between high involvement rifts and pvp. You can not look at just one aspect of the game and say its boring, when that part of the game is intertwined with other aspects. Ie questing with rifts and invasions and exploration, as opposed to crafting which is done standing still in a town.
But as far as crafting, yes I do believe that all you do is make worthless item after worthless item until max level. Someone needs to develop a system that is not as random as EQ2 or time consuming as Vanguard, but at the same time not as boring as WoW. And for heaven's sake, please make crafted items worth it. It's not hard to add crafting dailies that reward people with an item that when you do a few dailies, gives you an item that can make dungeon grade loot. Start it out with like 2 dailies at low level up to 14-21 at higher levels, and then crafters can feel like its worthwhile to craft.
And one last thing on questing, I really wish that devs would finally stop sending you out to places multiple times and more importantly if I go out the first time and kill the boss in that area, when I come back don't say, "Now I need you to go kill the boss.", instead say, "Hey, I was going to ask you to take care of that guy, but you already did. Thanks!". Warhammer had promised this but didn't come through, and its about time a developer did.
As a 300 weaponsmith in the game i find checklist crafting to be a delight right now Getting recipes is one of the biggest pieces of depth the crafting system has. I can say for a certainty no one has every recipe because of how the system is setup. Its hard enough to get the recipes for certain items. Espeically at high ranks. Pristine distliliate cinerium bars. Its not easy. If it was more involved it'd be an even more difficult process. After hunting these items down you dont reallly WANT to do more than hit a button. (Price of minor catalyst. 10 plat right now. Probably not changing. Pristine distliate 1 plat might change.)
Leveling paths: *BZZT* Sorry not quite accurate. While leveling via questing is the STANDARD way it is not the only way. If you wanted to you could slam rifts shut all day long with your friends. If you're concerned about solo. You could hit warfronts all day long. This is addressed in the 5 things rift does right story. Two factions are what will make this game work from a population standpoint.
Questing: I find issue with this only because the STORY is what carries a lot of this. Following the story Is what drove me to follow the path of Uriel through the game. (Even though that quest line is bugged to hell) It Drove me through Shimmersand not once but twice. An ending of a story that i began to love at level 30 let loose an event that could shake the Defiant V Guardian situation to its core. I'm trying not to give spoilers. For this game, the story is what carries the quests. At least for me.
Though I am all for a smooth, polished game with little problems on launch, everything I've read so far about Rift seems to be just another variant of what has become the norm of mmorpg game design.
I like a challenge, I like to feel that when I do/achieve something that I get a sense of reward. That I have to use a bit of brain power and some luck to pull something off. WoW was never much for the risk=reward concept from the start, that said they totally chipped away at it with each expansion and patch so that now there is no risk/reward.
I am waiting for a game that brings back that risk/reward concept and yet is polished, indepth and a place where I will be happy to come and immerse myself for years at a time. I had alot of hope because I know/knew Scott Hartman from long ago when he was a GM for Gemstone III back on GEnie (in the early 1990's), I think I let myself get a bit too excited though that Rift would bring back the sense of discovery, risk/reward and more open ended gaming.
if you find any game out there, fullfilling these requirements nowadays (beside EVE and Darkfall to a certain extent), please let me know
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
It's an improvement over vanilla WoW maybe, but not Cata WoW. Though there are some nice exceptions like a couple of the university quests, Rift has the same stuff you saw in vanilla, except you return to the same areas more often.
Cata WoW has alot more variance regarding what it takes to complete quests, and what happens after you do. You rebuild a flying machine through a number of quests, then take that machine to complete another objective, for example.
Still others don't ever require you to return. In some cases you can't, because something "catacalysmic" has occurred and your quest giver is gone.
Good article, They would do well to try and address these very issues.
Of course there are other Questing-Methods than just...
a) bring item x to person y
b) escort xyz
c) kill x amount of y-type of monster
d) "discover" / "scout" location x (by just going there and get your free xp)
e) craft x number of items using y (alchemy, weapon/armor-smithing etcpp) and bring them to npc z
Now let me think for 10seconds and I can give you a ton of new (or less used) Ideas and I'm not even a Dev:
1) Talk to Person x and convince her to do y and then kill Person x for doing y. Talk to Person z that Person x done y. Or Betrayal, kill the Quest Npc and get along with the Person you should actually have killed. Or just copy the whole Fable 3 Concept and improve it ;-)
2) A whole bunch of Baldurs-Gate like Chat-Dialogues which you actually HAVE TO READ in order to get to your Goal (whatever that might be then)
3) Sneak up to Person x1 and x2, hide behind y and listen what they talk about. either kill them or talk to Npc z (from Age of Conan)
4) Study different Books in a Library - omg noe, reading againn! - to find out what happened to Person x 100years ago / Study Corpses of mumified Victims (etc). This be a hint what happened to Person y which you have to find / discover Person z's hideout / secret Society (etc)
5) Raise a Pet. Train him skills, at which the Pet suxx hard at the Beginning. Plant a Tree which takes some time: An acricultural-crafting Idea. This can all be part of a bigger Quest.
6) For every Quest, give the Player the Option how he wants to complete it and give him atleast a good/bad/neutral Option!
7) Or hey! Quests do not exist. It's all based on "do what you want / discover what you want" . Then you insert an Oblivion/The Secret World-like Skill-improving system . And get beaten up by Mobs because u were too weak in the first Place but now can whoop their arses (etc)
and this is just an example. but Stuff isn't hard when you actually wan't to do it.
And don't say there are no other Ways. God damnit - IDEAS ARE INFINITE! There IS no CAN'T DO. And your not even talking about Real-Life - talking about a Virtual World where everything can happen!
Phew :-)
sounds to me like your EQ2 crafting skills your doing it wrong. you spam the incress health of your crafting and only hit other buttons as it proc's you too IE, spell flux or what ever, once you have built up the health of the item by like 10-20+ clicks then you do the incrssd speed and quality alternate, untill finaly its done, you sould end at 100% every time.
Since two of the five bad kind of address the same thing. I've got one that is really bothering me. NO GUILD BANKS or some kind of guild banking system, and no guild housing.