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Rift PVP Question
How is rift PVP structured? I know there is open world pvp, but how does that work? Is it like WoW where you go to contested zones? Can you progress in PVP from world pvp? Are instanced PVP matches rated?
Also, is it possible to hold cities/towns/quest hubs of the opposing faction? In WoW all you could do was kill the quest NPCs but that was kind of lame.
Thanks in advance
Comments
i have the same question, if someone would kindly answer please ty
Its much like WoW's, in that its mainly battleground type instances. There are PVP servers where you can openly attack members of opposing factions. I enjoy it even if on my server defiant tends to have their butts handed to them but its probably not for hardcore pvp gamers. Also, because of the soul system (which I am a huge fan of) there are some balancing issues but it personally doesn't bother me...but then again I am a pve guy.
Here's how PvP works in Rift, at least at max level:
Basically once you hit level 50, you have the chance to start accumulating points (called prestige) into 6 extra PvP levels. To gain prestige you need to either kill enemy players, complete warfront objectives or idealy both. The prestige levels affect how high into your PvP soul tree you can get and what quality of PvP armor you can equip (sold at special vendors).
Gaining prestige is a lot tougher than levelling. So it's natural that for now people gravitate towards gaining prestige via the fastest method, which is the warfronts. That does have an impact on the world PvP. Usually the people who engage in world PvP at the moment are those who can ambush others (rogue classes) and some FOTM souls (currently certain mages). Generally speaking though most of the people heavily interested in PvP are in warfronts, so the peple who roam in the open world are more interested in completing their PvE objectives than engage you. In fact, if you assist them, they won't fight you.
The above holds true on an individual level. When groups or raids are involved things change a bit. Between groups, if one of the members attacks it escallates, although usually both parties are cautious but not aggressive. When two raids meet up, it's usually always a fight. The only time it isn't a straigth fight is when a boss from a world invasion is spawned. Then both sides kill the boss first, then go at each others throat.
The above are from my limited experience observing my server in EU (PvP) in between breaks from warfronts. The recent world event played some role into having more time to observe things in the open world.
As far as I'm concerned, once I reach prestige 6 and get my full tier 2 PvP armor, I'll abandon warfronts and stick into the open world only. Unfortunately for now the open world does not have some strong incentive to participate into some open PvP (for example a castle siege of some sort). The ancient sourcestones are not really important in terms of reward and the prestige and favor gain in the open world is minimal, which drives people towards warfronts.
The ability to take hostile hubs is there but it's not yet utilised. If you destroy an enemy hub, the NPCs disappear but only for a while. Later on the whole thing resets.
As for the PvP itself, its fun for the most part. Some over the top classes at the moment make things challenging, but I'm not anywhere near giving up from frustration. The recent balancing patch helped a bit with that, although it is clear that more balancing is necessary (I'm looking at you pyros). After the patch there is definitely more variety of souls in almost everything but mages. It does make things interesting.
One thing that will probably frustrate people in warfronts is that a premade group of 5 is still allowed to queue along with total random people.
If anyone got any more specific questions I'll be happy to post. Also if I forgot to mention something, I'll add it up later on.
Nice post
In my opinion the PVP is terrible, Classes are very unbalanced, There is no initiative to go out and world PVP at all, You just queue up over and over again grinding out the same warfronts for a few pieces of PVP gear each prestige rank heck even PVE gear is somewhat better.
The rift forums have erupted with posts regarding the poor PVP and alot of people including myself have left.
If you are looking for a game with decent PVP dont touch rift, Come back in 6 months and see what its like.
Agreed. World PVP is next to non-existance, especially now they have added invisible guards to most towns including the high level ones. There is only one new warfront at level 50, and it's the worst of the lot (PVE crap), and seeing WF's are the only real effective way to increase PVP ranks all you will be doing at 50 is grinding WF's.
Not only that, but there is huge imbalances and class design flaws.
It's terrible. Clearly this game was designed for PVE, with PVP tacked on as an afterthought.
If PVP is your thing, avoid Rift.
The theory is sound.
The implentation is not.
While i have had some fun with PvP, for the most part its just as frustrating as warcraft. The maps are not well designed, so every game plays out almost the same everytime. In the first map you can play, its just rush the middle, take the fang (flag) and hide behind the tree on your teams side while getting spam healed. Your teammates just spam there aoe slows and knockback abilites and gang up on any lone person that happens to go for the flag.
In the Codec, which is very Arathi Basin insipred is, everyone rushed the Codec capture point, as it gives the most points. Rather then have 5 capture points there are only 4, so this prevents a stalemate when each side takes two. Again, it plays out the same. everyone fights for codec, and some lone wolf runs around and ninjas the other points, while the other team does the same. For sure though i prefer this map though.
In the capture the flag map, its just well, dumb. Imagine warsong gulch, but a MUCH furher distance between bases. Both teams rush to the other side, ingore the other team and take the flag. its not just a sit on the flag game until one teams zerg can over come the other teams flag first.
Have not played Port of Scion yet.
There is also another name for Warfronts..
Roguefronts...seriously. I can tab through the other teams 10 players in the black fang map and see 6 or 7 rogues, which are all bards, which are all spamming aoe heals while they dps.
To go into more detail.
DPS: This is relegated to a few OP setups. Warriors are almost always 2-hand weapon champs, mages tend to always be instant cast dot locks or the such, as they can jump around chain slowing any melee while there dots to insane damage. And rogues are just insane with there sheer amount of damage mitigation combined with teleports and sprints and heals.
Healing: Its rare to see a true cleric healer, but when you do they are insanly over powered. Ive tried the Rift Knight before(drains mana) and have gotten a cleric to a small sliver of mana, but that is enough to keep themselves topped off in heals unless they have several players beating on them at once. Most healers though tend to be bards because its harder to interupt there heals, they do decent dps, and they have no mana, just energy which replenishes rapidly.
In truth, which two even matched teams PvP can be fun, but that is so rare, that 90% of the matches im in are so one-sided its never a contest. And in my shard, its generally always Gaurdians who win. I know some shards "battlegroups" is opposite. If Trion can at some point shift the servers around to balance pvp, then it will be a lot better for us all.
The problem you have beating the healing clerics is due to you not knowing how, not the clerics being overpowered (forgetting for a second that you're not at max level yet).
In black garden keeping in the middle (if your team can handle it) is the best way to get a decisive victory. In any case, the team that controls the middle in the majority of cases wins.
The pvp is identical to WOW and the WF's are identical to those in WAR and WOW. There is nothing new or innovative, there was not even a grace period to enable open world pvp to flourish like the first 6 months of WOW - similar to the release of WAR, battlegrounds were there from day 1 and pretty much killed open world pvp from the beginning.
The role system looks new and innovative, and people who like designing fun and interesting builds (like myself) at first glance think that it is wonderful - it is not, there is actually less choice than games like DAOC. Don't be fooled.
If you like purple shinies and bland combat, cookie cutter builds and imbalanced classes, not talking to anyone, and WOW battlegrounds - play RIFT
If you like skillfull combat and competitive pvp, innovative builds and making new friends through properly implemented socialising - wait for something else to be released
Here's the thing about warfronts. They are supposed to be a fast outlet to PvP for people that don't have much time and want to get a fast fix. And this is not about Rift only, but it's about all games that feature some form of warfronts and claim to have open world PvP as well.
The reality of things is that game companies design them under two assumptions:
They link gear and other upgrades into some form of PvP progress. This is done so that PvPers are occuppied in similar amount of time to PvErs doing raid and other high level activities. Unfortunately this design leads to inevitable grinding.
In order to keep the casual people competitive, they keep the warfront rewards high. They may not necessarily be the highest in the game, but since it's the most concentrated, it usually is the highest per time spent.
Add those two and you get people interested in PvP locked inside warfronts effectively grinding what is not necessarily the most fun activity in the game with only the rewards as a goal. Once the goal is achieve the warfronts are abandoned. By that time people have been bored to tears from them, even if the activities themselves were fun at some point.
Warfronts also amplify things that may not necessarily be as inbalanced as they appear at first look. Take for example the bubble buff that effectively doubles spellpower or attackpower for one minute. Give that to a soul with a higher than normal (perhaps) damage output and you have that output doubled. Then you have people crying murder about that specific soul. In world PvP, where there is no such buff, the imbalance would still be there, but it would not have been amplified in such a blatant manner.
Solution:
Make the buff a 20% increase instead of a whooping 100% one.
Balance the offending souls over their real damage potential in open world environment and not under gimmicky cirqumstances inside a warfront
As for the open world vs warfront debate, here's how it could work:
Have some form of castle territory attackable and defensible every prime time during the day.
Make that territory desirable in some way that is not grindy (no more dailies, please).
In other words attach a huge reward for having and keeping that territory. For example, double favor for the side that holds the territory, 50% more loot from everything in the game, including dungeons and raid groups. What I mean is that if your side has the territory, then a successful dungeon run could give more money and items.
That way you'll entice not only the PvP heavy people but also a part of the PvE community.
If people choose not to participate and their side does not hold the territory, then they get normal loot and PvP rewards.
The open world rewards really need to be massive compared to warfronts.
Warfronts are supposed to be there to give a quick fix for somebody who has 15-30 mins of gameplay and wants to jump in and out of the game. Not to be THE main PvP activity of the games. In this sense warfronts are essential, but the open world PvP part needs a huge boost.
The thing is though, Warfronts were a losing proposition fom the beginning. DAOC had the winning formula with large persistant battlegrounds with defendable objectives years ago, which was why people were so excited about WAR - and then were so dissappointed because WAR just popped in the already failed Warfronts
In the DAOC persitant level ranged BG's, you could earn xp through pvp or pve - there were mobs in the BG's, there were PVE bosses in the bg's that dropped special loot, there were faction guards, siege weapons, defendable castles and keeps
Compared to -
A 15 minute frenzied CTF free for all on a limited range of maps that just keeps repeating like groundhog day ad nauseum
Call me old fasioned, but I know which one I preferred
Well, Warhammer was supposed to be a battlegrounds/warfronts game and that design was changed later (and the rushed results were apparent). That's why the WAR battlegrounds were so much fun as opposed to the open world counterpart. I don't think that Mythic suddently forgot how to design a good game. They were just forced by fans to a design direction they didn't planned to do so. In theory they were right. Why make a game that will compete to another success of yours instead of just updating that success?
The thing is though they ended up doing up neither - they never updated DAOC or released a game that competed against it, they released a game to try and take some WOW players and failed. They STILL haven't - and nobody else has either - released a game on a modern engine capitalising on the lessons learned through DAOC
I did not participate in the beta of either WAR, RIFT or AION - but judging from reading the forums about changes implemented from beta testing feedback, as a developer i would extremely skeptical of any feedback provided by beta testers in any future games - are they purposely trying to sabotage the future success of the game, do they have no real concept of how things like combat mechanics and succesful pvp work, or are they just blinded by the initial 'OMG this game ROXORS!!' factor ?
I am still waiting on either -
1. A developer to release an EXACT copy of UO pre-trammel onto a modern 3D gaming engine
2. A developer to release a slightly modified copy of DAOC onto a modern 3D gaming engine - by slightly modified I mean small adjustments as per thousands of player feedbacks. They don't even have to think for themselves!! It's all already been done for them and easily accessible on the VN boards ffs
And I just have to wonder whether I will ever see either of these basic hopes eventuate
I made it to level 50 and rank 3 before I bowed out.
Rift PVP as stated earlier is pretty much just spending hours repeating the same warfronts over and over and over. If this is your thing then you might be ok with it. At this level the PvE is the same as well, repeat the same daily quest or dungeun over and over. I'm not sure myself how this could be fun after the first dozen or two times of repeating.
The balance never was too much of a problem for me, what seemed to determine the warfront wins was how many were afk playing (thats right, exp and prestige awarded for just queu'ing up, not doing anything and making your team lose). A very failed attempt at a design that shows not much thought was put towards PvP by Trion. This was one of the major problems of concern for most of my guildmates that left Rift as well.
Also... especially at 50 the CC is way over the top. Developers still haven't learned that you can't give everyone multiple ways of CC and expect good PvP to happen. No CC deminising returns either.
While many of Rift aspects are very nicely done by Trion, PvP was designed by the intern in between coffee runs.
Just my O!
Palazious <The Vindicators> Darkfall
Palazious r40, rr45 SW War
Palazious 50 Pirate PoTBS
Palazious 35 Sorcerer Vanguard
Palazious 75 wizard EQ
Paladori 50 Champion LOTRO
Poppa Reaver bugged at rank15
If you want high quality pvp, then don't play Rift.
If it was up to me, I would take pvp out of the game completely save for maybe personal duels..for fun.
Diminishng returns are in full effect in everything, especially after patch 1.1. Crowd control is how you're supposed to deal with healers, so you can't get rid of it completel, else they're unkillable.
Before 1.1 there was absolutely no diminishing returns. I'm not sure as to the 1.1 changes as after a discussion on pvp by the guild we all decided that it wasn't a game for us and we bowed out before the 3rd. Hopefully they did, but too late for many.
Palazious <The Vindicators> Darkfall
Palazious r40, rr45 SW War
Palazious 50 Pirate PoTBS
Palazious 35 Sorcerer Vanguard
Palazious 75 wizard EQ
Paladori 50 Champion LOTRO
Poppa Reaver bugged at rank15
When an Elementalist with Break and Sever can still be stunned 100-0... one might question the existence of DR.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Noone said they removed CC, but the diminishing returns are definitely there. Also your break spell is on a 2mins cooldown now instead of 5.
PvP is equal if more about survivability than heal or damage output. I'm playing in random warfronts as a healer and I've seen people being totally glass cannons and die before my 2 seconds heal fires off. I've also seen mages getting beaten by 3-5 people and shrug off the damage until they get stunned for a while.
I'm not sure what the problem is but it's seldom one factor that is in effect. How's your PvP gear for example?