Yeah but Aion had a great facing, but nothing to back it up, all the nice features offered to the players were in fact a new way to piss em off. Rift is well structured, well designed not a miracle in its genre but its a nice game.
It's a flash in the pan sort of game. Fun for the first month or two, but it just doesn't have nearly enough content to go beyond that. Once the content runs dry, the other flaws become more and more obvious as well. Trion did a great job at polishing up what game they had, but all the polish in the world won't hide the fact that the game has about a third (or less) of the content it needed for a successful run.
Also, they continue to signal, through word and deed, that the soul system was indeed a gimmick and that they will devolve the system quickly until there are few viable builds and what's left will fit back into the narrow little box of genre defined class roles.
Rifts got old fast, so they pushed a huge invasion event. That will burn people out on invasions and there just won't be much novelty left.
So, not too surprising that early reviews would ignore some obvious flaws and rate up based on the initial fun factor. I can't see that rating lasting too much longer and I'm sure a year from now, a lot of sites that rated the game 8.5+ will be writing about why the game ultimately fizzled.
Lessons to be learned? Polish, smoke and mirrors can make quite a first impression, but if your game world is far too small and content far too sparse, don't expect it to be an ongoing success.; or your reputation among the playerbase to remain intact.
I predict by the time the game hits it's first anniversary, the player score here will be under 7.8 and even that will be artificially high, due to early high scores that no one bothers to change once the game experience sours.
(BTW, I did really enjoy the first 5 weeks. I got my money's worth for the box price. However, I'm really ticked off to see another game with such potential throw away long term success because they decided to rush to market with far too little content. Plus, the "bait and switch" on the soul system doesn't help Trion's cause any).
Rift deserves every bit of the 8.7 this site has given it, Rift is a well made entertaining game, I enjoy the style of game that Trion has made. The game is exactly what I expected and was looking for, a game that is in line with EQ, AO, WoW etc.
The funny thing is...if a game is similiar to another it is bashed by the kiddie crowd, if a game actually tries something different the same kiddie crowd cries that its not enough like the Holy Grail(we know which game I am talking about), best thing for everyone involved would be for these kids to stick with consoles, and stop trying to ruin the MMoRPG market.
Yeah but Aion had a great facing, but nothing to back it up, all the nice features offered to the players were in fact a new way to piss em off. Rift is well structured, well designed not a miracle in its genre but its a nice game.
I think you may still be in the "honey moon" phase. I think most people will look back at Rift, a year from now, the same way they now look at Aion. A game that had some nice things going for it, but lost out long term due to a world that was way too small; a gimmick that wore thin quickly; and design flaws that became more and more evident once the initial euphoria wore off.
For me, the honey moon ended with Rift a lot quicker than it did with Aion. Probably because the leveliling curve, while still too shallow, was a lot steeper than what we got with Rift.
Almost every problem with Rift comes back to the world being way, way too small. The far too short and shallow leveling curve is a result of lack of content. The leveling curve renders the per zone reputation grinds and even Rift grinds pointless, because everyone outlevels the rewards before they can earn them. "End Game" comes way too quickly and on it's own is very unsatisfying due to lack of content and lack of a larger world to explore upon hitting the level cap.
Even the gutting of the Soul System is in part a result of too little content. Hybrid builds just amplified the short/shallow leveling curve by being too capable at progressing to the level cap. Variety could have been ensured by lifting pure builds up to the level of the hybrid builds, but lack of content forced them to balance everything downwards in order to try to slow down the average leveling pace. (Fool hardy, IMO, since the leveling curve is so short that making it 20% longer doesn't really add many hours of game play).
Oh, another major flaw? Rifts and invasions do NOT properly scale to population size. If they did, there would be a lot more Rift and Invasion action going on in the less populated zones, with the difficulty scaling to those population numbers. In spite of how easy it is to hit the level cap, the higher level zones are fairly empty. Why? Because people only have to spend a few hours in each of those zones actually leveling and lack of Rift/invasion activity provides no ongoing incentive to be active there.
Just a preview of what all the zones will be like, once the server populations start to seriously dwindle. Trion claimed they had the aswer to PQs that wouldn't become unplayable as population levels for particular zones and level ranges dropped. Well, guess what? They didn't solve anything.
The first few bites of Rift taste pretty good, but it just makes you more hungry for something with substance and leaves one hell of a bad after taste!
Rift deserves every bit of the 8.7 this site has given it, Rift is a well made entertaining game, I enjoy the style of game that Trion has made. The game is exactly what I expected and was looking for, a game that is in line with EQ, AO, WoW etc.
The funny thing is...if a game is similiar to another it is bashed by the kiddie crowd, if a game actually tries something different the same kiddie crowd cries that its not enough like the Holy Grail(we know which game I am talking about), best thing for everyone involved would be for these kids to stick with consoles, and stop trying to ruin the MMoRPG market.
1. it's really weak to attempt others as 'kiddies' just because they disagree with your feelings on a game.
2. The folks that don't like Rift seem to want deeper, more imaginative, more ambitious games, which is the opposite of the 'console' element that you claim, so I will put this down as just another attempt to demean folks (if you consider playing consoles somehow less then playing a PC that is, which you obviously do).
3. Rift is not in line with EQ. It isnt half the game of EQ... It might be it's descendent, it might share some genes, but as a grandchild it's a watered down, streamlined, linear, no challenge version of it's forefather. EQ was an amazing ambitious themepark that pushed the envelope in a ton of ways- Rift isnt.
The score is fine. I just think a few new categories might need to be added, to apply more toward MMORPGs. Like a Longevity Category. How long will it last a player. Maybe an Immersion Category(no, RP isn't the same thing) as well.
The score might be fine,but adding more categories is not the answer.The reason is any fanbois can login and press 10/10 foir everything and i am 100% positive this happens.
If you want a creditable system,then you need soemone who has no vested interest in advertisements or the game itself.A perfect person would be soemone who has worked on a high level game engine and understands all the aspects.Allowing the people to vote is just biased voting,it means absolutely nothing to creating a creditable score be it 1/10 or 10/10.
Game design should be left to people who know their stuff and a panel of say 3-5,to get a decent varied outlook on each game.
Also, any "hater" can log in and hit 1 out of 10 and you get the same thing. I'm pretty sure that happens as well.
The second argument is plato's philosopher kings all over again. The intelligentsia know what's best for the riff raff. Which of course doesn't hold water. Regardless of what one thinks of people I think they tend to know their own mind.
Besides, who are these games being sold to? The players. It's better that someone who plays a lot of games and can take the game for what it is striving to be (not what the reviwer "wants" it to be) review them.
Doesn't matter if the reviewer knows game engines. Who cares. Do you think I'm going to let someone who has worked on a game engine tell me what I think is fun? It does't matter. If the reviewer does his job he will look at what the game is trying to be, tell players if the game succeeds, give the strengthsand weaknesses given the style of game and if he/she does praise or critciise then he/she should give context and reason for the prais/criticism.
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This site has got into the habit of giving only good reviews, or not reviewing them at all if they can't get away with it (i.e. FF XIV). So personally I just ignore them these days. The majority of MMOs these days offer access during open beta. While that isn't the purpose, its always the best way to make your own mind up prior to any trials.
Rift is a shallow copy paste design, but for a time can be enjoyable. The shortfalls however quickly show once the newness has subsided. It certainly doesn't deserve anywhere near the score it received, once expereienced to level cap.
The only good thing that can be said about it, is that at launch it was one of the most polished games we've seen in a long while. I sense that had more of an impact on the score than anything else. Everything else is substandard coping from various games, when compaired to the source.
I personally feel they just pulled together mechanics they saw working in other games, without having a clue why they were successful, how to improve upon them, or how to move things foward.
You can't add 'longevity' as part of an MMO review. You review what's available not what content may or may not be available in the future.
Adding another layer of subjectivety to the review process will produce inconsistent results.
You can still add the Longevity category and just apply it to current content. An MMORPG better be able to keep you playing with it's current content, future content aside. Thats how you rate it. Based on what is available. Think about all the MMORPGs in the last few years where this category would have made a HUGE difference. You all want to know why WoW is so popular? because it made you able to roll, literally, 4 plus characters and each one of them had a different leveling path, thereby increasing how long you could play the game. And it did, I played that game from launch for a good year before I took a break, and was brought right back with the expansions. Now look at AoC. One starting area. I've gotten one character to 80 and every character since then I've tried to play has driven me from the game due to how boring it was to retread the same content. Hence I quit within 3 months of launch and haven't really been back for longer than 1 month at a time.
Hence a Longevity category would be perfect to score this aspect, which is a MAJOR factor in MMORPGs. Currently though, as MMOMaverick stated, all of these games are being scored in similar vain to single player games. That needs to stop.
So warhammer had 4 zones and it is still not doing well. One factor we are missing here for WOW really is timing. WOW was lucky enough to come out when people were tired of the serious sandbox grinders. It offered fun, little to no gold spammers, easy gameplay that allowed the average person to be a gamer. WOW became apart of pop culture and it wil be hard for any MMO to really obtain that kind of success now that the market is saturated.
Logevity is not a good category cannot be measured until time has elasped and for this reason it should NOT be added. You can't predicted what people will like so longevity is not really a realistic option. Major factors why WOW had LONGEVITY is gameplay, enjoyable content, and genre innovations. Longevity was only a product of that of those factors.
Lathander81, I agre with your assessment of WoW. It was the Beatles of games, right place, right time, right product. There will never be another WoW in terms of subs in the West. However, one thing producers fail to see is that much like politics where people tire of Republicans and vote them all out only to vote all the Democrats a few years later; so it is with MMOs. People have massive WoW-Fatigue right now. If something even smells like WoW it bores people to tears.
They dumbed down the genre and made everything fast, easy and accessible like McDonalds or Wal-Mart. It's time however for specialty stores to pop up with depth. People are ready for character depth and difficulty and even some micro-managing again.
Notice I didn't say grind. Leveling should take longer but it doesnt have to be a "grind". Just add more to do along the way besides whacking foozles and collecting their tails.
Thirty years of gaming experience...not sure if I should be proud of that www.mmoexaminer.blogspot.com
just another opinion but I think the ratings too high for most games. in order to be scored a perfect 10 a game would have to appeal to all people at all times, Rift is a solid game but falls way to short of my perfect 10 definition to earn the 8.5 rated here.
I haven't found a game worthy of a score higher than 7.5, Rift earned about a 6.7 on my scale. Still solid but if we're just talking ratings on a 1 to 10 scale that's my 2 cents.
just another opinion but I think the ratings too high for most games. in order to be scored a perfect 10 a game would have to appeal to all people at all times, Rift is a solid game but falls way to short of my perfect 10 definition to earn the 8.5 rated here.
I haven't found a game worthy of a score higher than 7.5, Rift earned about a 6.7 on my scale. Still solid but if we're just talking ratings on a 1 to 10 scale that's my 2 cents.
I'm sorry, but this is simply unreasonable. No game will ever appeal to all people at all times. By that definition, no game could even earn a 5, because you'll never find a game that will appeal to 1/2 of the people 1/2 of the time.
Nevermind, I'm not sorry.
If you're going to set a rediculous standard, you can't expect everyone else to fall in line. Their score is .2 off from the average on this site, and .3 off from the Metacritic average... which means they're pretty much on target.
This site has got into the habit of giving only good reviews, or not reviewing them at all if they can't get away with it (i.e. FF XIV). So personally I just ignore them these days. The majority of MMOs these days offer access during open beta. While that isn't the purpose, its always the best way to make your own mind up prior to any trials.
Rift is a shallow copy paste design, but for a time can be enjoyable. The shortfalls however quickly show once the newness has subsided. It certainly doesn't deserve anywhere near the score it received, once expereienced to level cap.
The only good thing that can be said about it, is that at launch it was one of the most polished games we've seen in a long while. I sense that had more of an impact on the score than anything else. Everything else is substandard coping from various games, when compaired to the source.
I personally feel they just pulled together mechanics they saw working in other games, without having a clue why they were successful, how to improve upon them, or how to move things foward.
Im seeing a trend of people saying "copy and paste" but I don't understand why. What design did they copy and paste in Rift? Give me some expamles but I feel like the game makes some good choices for environments, sounds and even the score is good. The features in the game are not anything new such as the guild system, public grouping and the UI but if Rift didn't have the features people would complain about that.
Finally you say they didn't move forward with them but I think your wrong. Yes they have a public group but they made it to where rifts would appear all over the map. So you can group up and stop invasions, close rifts and enter dungeons. No other game is doing that. The UI has incorporated many ideas that are used as addons like the damage and health meters and the smart targeting. The guild system took WAR's system a bit further by adding perks for crafting, dungeons, and pvp. So in my opinion any game coming out is going to have these features because they work and not because they are copying paste. There is alot of imagination in RIFT and its sad that people can't see it.
You guys are missing my point. I dont care about meta critic.
What blows my mind that Rift is the best game in the market according to MMORPG ratings. No game has gotten that high of a score from this site.
Rift is not a bad game game, but there is zero chance its the best MMO on the market.
For me is for now with good potential to become first. But if I consider this was most fluid start ever, how polished was at day 1 .... could be easily considered best on market. After long time one game where i feel at home, when playing everything feels as one would excpect.
For the sake of me being bored, I made a list of This site vote Vs Metacritic. here is what emerged:
Everquest: 7.8 Vs 85
Everquest 2: 7.9 Vs 83
Age of Conan: 7.0 Vs 80
Aion: 8.7 Vs 76
DC Universe Online: 8.0 vs 72
City of Heroes: 8.3 Vs 85
Dark age of camelot: 7.5 Vs 88
Darkfall: 7.2 vs 45 (but not enough reviews to count)
D&D online: 8.0 Vs 74
EVE online: 8.5 Vs 88 (counting the special edition release and not the original release)
FF XI: 6.5 Vs 85
FF XIV: - Vs 49
Guild wars: 8.1 vs 89
LOTRO: 8.5 vs 86
Ragnarok: 6.6 vs 79
Rift: 8.7 vs 84
Runes of magic: 7.7 vs 71
Ryzom: 7.3 vs 64
STO: 7.4 Vs 66
SWG: 6.8 Vs 71
UO: 7.8 Vs 59-74 (so many xpansions and re-releases, so for metacritic there is the lowest and highest rating for this)
Vanguard: 7.6 vs 68
WAR: 7.5 vs 86
WoW: 8.1 vs 93
A lot of numbers. What can we extrapolate from this?
Well, for one, that MMORPG's numbers seems to be more average than metacritic, that is a feat, I tell you as we do not have anything under 6.5 or higher than 8.7. A 2 points spread out of 10.
What also we can see is that the top games by metacritic are, in ranking order:
WoW - 93
Guild wars - 89
DAoC, EVE - 88
Lotro - WAR - 86
FFXI, CoH - 85
ALL of these received LESS points from MMO than from metacritic (remember metacritic is an average of dozens of reviews across many sources, including magzines, online sites etc). Even EVE, long considered the top game here winning game of the year several times, got less than 88 with 8.5. Some cases have a bigger gap than others (FFXI leads with a 2 points gap).
The top games by MMO are:
Rift, Aion - 8.7
LOTRO, EVE - 8.5
City of Heroes - 8.3
WoW, Guild Wars - 8.1
DC universe, DDO - 8.0
Now here is a more varied beast, but the top games got significantly less on metacritic than here.
Conclusions:
The only thing that can be said after seeing these numbers is that MMO uses a too small gap for their votes. A 2 points gap is too little, start to give 4s and 2s even to relatively big releases and also give 9s and 10s. Alternatively, take the 2 point spread and make it a 10 point spread, so FFXI would be a 1 and Rift a 10 or a 9.5. Most of these disparities can be counted on that and personal preference of the reviewer. It is puzzling how EVE got so little when it was clearly a favorite and how RIFT and Aion got so high votes when the biggest thing going for them was a polished launch... that should not, by itself, give top score to a game.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
But Vesavius, those kind of games do not exist. There are a handful fo titles with elements of a deeper game; EvE, FE (that's now more thempark I hear), DF,UO. But they either look very old or are incomplete for what modern console and social networking types want to play. No game like that is going to get major funding so they all now look second rate.
So we are left with chossing the best of these themepark MMO's. Rift ticks the box.
But Vesavius, those kind of games do not exist. There are a handful fo titles with elements of a deeper game; EvE, FE (that's now more thempark I hear), DF,UO. But they either look very old or are incomplete for what modern console and social networking types want to play. No game like that is going to get major funding so they all now look second rate.
So we are left with chossing the best of these themepark MMO's. Rift ticks the box.
I get what you are saying, but I would rather just not play MMOs until one delivers more of what I am looking for. GW2 looks to be a pretty brave and imaginitive themepark game in a lot of ways, and one that dosent see 'fluff' as wasted effort, so I will def try that, and Archeage has tons of ambition on paper. We will see how that shapes up closer to the day. Of the two, AA right now looks closer to what will get me playing this genre again on a long term basis.
If it fails to deliver, well, theres Skyrim and other solo games upcoming that imo do the job way better and deliver a way more immersive and fun (for me) experience then solo quest grind MMOs. I have gone way past the point where it's MMOs or nothing
I read these post and wonder what game you guys are playing. The game might not be for everyone but there is plenty about it thats good. Also Rift didn't have a lot of hype til it was nearly out so the rating is really the people who like it. Because the hype meter is different.
Rift has alot to offer from what I've seen. I was questing today and all of the sudden the sky opens up and mobs are dropping on my head. What other game does that? The open group system is not original but it refreashing. The class system has alot to offer people who like to custom talior their skills and the graphics are awesome. The list goes one.
Also are people really that upset about endgame content? The game is like 2 months old and even still at somepoint it has to end. So because there is not alot to do doesn't make it bad. People are crying cause the game is not original and then asking to have end game content like WOW? My advise is that poeple need to enjoy the journey, get lost in the rifts for a few hours, pvp some, explore areas for artifacts, or just hang out in the cool world that Trion worked hard to create. Construtive negative posts are one thing but acting like Rift is a bad game is another.
Rifts opening on your head are only fun for so long before they get boring. When you can easily level a character to "end game" in a very short period of time, yes people are going to complain. Rift was promoted as "the game doesn't really start until endgame". That "end game" turned out to be another gear grind dungeon run treadmill that people are tired of. The world Trion created is WAY to small. You can be at level 20 in less than a days worth of playtime AS A CASUAL PLAYER. So you can complete 40% of the game in 1 day. Name any other MMO thats has lasted more than a few months where you could complete 40% of the content in 1 day.
Everything in Rift is WAY WAY to easy to have any real longevity. You get all the souls for each calling, so there is no point in having more than 4 characters. At that point, almost all of those characters will be 50 in a few weeks (if you are VERY casual). Then what? Grind the same dungeons you ran while leveling? No thanks.
As I've posted in other threads, here and on Rifts forums, I did quite alot in the first 30 or so days of my "free month". I was so bored with the game that I un-subbed before the subs kicked in. In beta I was pushing Rift to alot of my friends from previous games, most came to try the beta and liked it. Most of those same players have already left the game due to boredom. They all pretty much said the same things.... leveling is TOO EASY and once at 50, it's dungeons or broken pvp or log out. Why should anyone pay for something they won't play?
Comments
Yeah but Aion had a great facing, but nothing to back it up, all the nice features offered to the players were in fact a new way to piss em off. Rift is well structured, well designed not a miracle in its genre but its a nice game.
It's a flash in the pan sort of game. Fun for the first month or two, but it just doesn't have nearly enough content to go beyond that. Once the content runs dry, the other flaws become more and more obvious as well. Trion did a great job at polishing up what game they had, but all the polish in the world won't hide the fact that the game has about a third (or less) of the content it needed for a successful run.
Also, they continue to signal, through word and deed, that the soul system was indeed a gimmick and that they will devolve the system quickly until there are few viable builds and what's left will fit back into the narrow little box of genre defined class roles.
Rifts got old fast, so they pushed a huge invasion event. That will burn people out on invasions and there just won't be much novelty left.
So, not too surprising that early reviews would ignore some obvious flaws and rate up based on the initial fun factor. I can't see that rating lasting too much longer and I'm sure a year from now, a lot of sites that rated the game 8.5+ will be writing about why the game ultimately fizzled.
Lessons to be learned? Polish, smoke and mirrors can make quite a first impression, but if your game world is far too small and content far too sparse, don't expect it to be an ongoing success.; or your reputation among the playerbase to remain intact.
I predict by the time the game hits it's first anniversary, the player score here will be under 7.8 and even that will be artificially high, due to early high scores that no one bothers to change once the game experience sours.
(BTW, I did really enjoy the first 5 weeks. I got my money's worth for the box price. However, I'm really ticked off to see another game with such potential throw away long term success because they decided to rush to market with far too little content. Plus, the "bait and switch" on the soul system doesn't help Trion's cause any).
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Rift deserves every bit of the 8.7 this site has given it, Rift is a well made entertaining game, I enjoy the style of game that Trion has made. The game is exactly what I expected and was looking for, a game that is in line with EQ, AO, WoW etc.
The funny thing is...if a game is similiar to another it is bashed by the kiddie crowd, if a game actually tries something different the same kiddie crowd cries that its not enough like the Holy Grail(we know which game I am talking about), best thing for everyone involved would be for these kids to stick with consoles, and stop trying to ruin the MMoRPG market.
Godz of War I call Thee
I think you may still be in the "honey moon" phase. I think most people will look back at Rift, a year from now, the same way they now look at Aion. A game that had some nice things going for it, but lost out long term due to a world that was way too small; a gimmick that wore thin quickly; and design flaws that became more and more evident once the initial euphoria wore off.
For me, the honey moon ended with Rift a lot quicker than it did with Aion. Probably because the leveliling curve, while still too shallow, was a lot steeper than what we got with Rift.
Almost every problem with Rift comes back to the world being way, way too small. The far too short and shallow leveling curve is a result of lack of content. The leveling curve renders the per zone reputation grinds and even Rift grinds pointless, because everyone outlevels the rewards before they can earn them. "End Game" comes way too quickly and on it's own is very unsatisfying due to lack of content and lack of a larger world to explore upon hitting the level cap.
Even the gutting of the Soul System is in part a result of too little content. Hybrid builds just amplified the short/shallow leveling curve by being too capable at progressing to the level cap. Variety could have been ensured by lifting pure builds up to the level of the hybrid builds, but lack of content forced them to balance everything downwards in order to try to slow down the average leveling pace. (Fool hardy, IMO, since the leveling curve is so short that making it 20% longer doesn't really add many hours of game play).
Oh, another major flaw? Rifts and invasions do NOT properly scale to population size. If they did, there would be a lot more Rift and Invasion action going on in the less populated zones, with the difficulty scaling to those population numbers. In spite of how easy it is to hit the level cap, the higher level zones are fairly empty. Why? Because people only have to spend a few hours in each of those zones actually leveling and lack of Rift/invasion activity provides no ongoing incentive to be active there.
Just a preview of what all the zones will be like, once the server populations start to seriously dwindle. Trion claimed they had the aswer to PQs that wouldn't become unplayable as population levels for particular zones and level ranges dropped. Well, guess what? They didn't solve anything.
The first few bites of Rift taste pretty good, but it just makes you more hungry for something with substance and leaves one hell of a bad after taste!
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1. it's really weak to attempt others as 'kiddies' just because they disagree with your feelings on a game.
2. The folks that don't like Rift seem to want deeper, more imaginative, more ambitious games, which is the opposite of the 'console' element that you claim, so I will put this down as just another attempt to demean folks (if you consider playing consoles somehow less then playing a PC that is, which you obviously do).
3. Rift is not in line with EQ. It isnt half the game of EQ... It might be it's descendent, it might share some genes, but as a grandchild it's a watered down, streamlined, linear, no challenge version of it's forefather. EQ was an amazing ambitious themepark that pushed the envelope in a ton of ways- Rift isnt.
Also, any "hater" can log in and hit 1 out of 10 and you get the same thing. I'm pretty sure that happens as well.
The second argument is plato's philosopher kings all over again. The intelligentsia know what's best for the riff raff. Which of course doesn't hold water. Regardless of what one thinks of people I think they tend to know their own mind.
Besides, who are these games being sold to? The players. It's better that someone who plays a lot of games and can take the game for what it is striving to be (not what the reviwer "wants" it to be) review them.
Doesn't matter if the reviewer knows game engines. Who cares. Do you think I'm going to let someone who has worked on a game engine tell me what I think is fun? It does't matter. If the reviewer does his job he will look at what the game is trying to be, tell players if the game succeeds, give the strengthsand weaknesses given the style of game and if he/she does praise or critciise then he/she should give context and reason for the prais/criticism.
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The game is well worth the score it got! Nothing more to add in this thread really.
This site has got into the habit of giving only good reviews, or not reviewing them at all if they can't get away with it (i.e. FF XIV). So personally I just ignore them these days. The majority of MMOs these days offer access during open beta. While that isn't the purpose, its always the best way to make your own mind up prior to any trials.
Rift is a shallow copy paste design, but for a time can be enjoyable. The shortfalls however quickly show once the newness has subsided. It certainly doesn't deserve anywhere near the score it received, once expereienced to level cap.
The only good thing that can be said about it, is that at launch it was one of the most polished games we've seen in a long while. I sense that had more of an impact on the score than anything else. Everything else is substandard coping from various games, when compaired to the source.
I personally feel they just pulled together mechanics they saw working in other games, without having a clue why they were successful, how to improve upon them, or how to move things foward.
Lathander81, I agre with your assessment of WoW. It was the Beatles of games, right place, right time, right product. There will never be another WoW in terms of subs in the West. However, one thing producers fail to see is that much like politics where people tire of Republicans and vote them all out only to vote all the Democrats a few years later; so it is with MMOs. People have massive WoW-Fatigue right now. If something even smells like WoW it bores people to tears.
They dumbed down the genre and made everything fast, easy and accessible like McDonalds or Wal-Mart. It's time however for specialty stores to pop up with depth. People are ready for character depth and difficulty and even some micro-managing again.
Notice I didn't say grind. Leveling should take longer but it doesnt have to be a "grind". Just add more to do along the way besides whacking foozles and collecting their tails.
Thirty years of gaming experience...not sure if I should be proud of that
www.mmoexaminer.blogspot.com
just another opinion but I think the ratings too high for most games. in order to be scored a perfect 10 a game would have to appeal to all people at all times, Rift is a solid game but falls way to short of my perfect 10 definition to earn the 8.5 rated here.
I haven't found a game worthy of a score higher than 7.5, Rift earned about a 6.7 on my scale. Still solid but if we're just talking ratings on a 1 to 10 scale that's my 2 cents.
I'm sorry, but this is simply unreasonable. No game will ever appeal to all people at all times. By that definition, no game could even earn a 5, because you'll never find a game that will appeal to 1/2 of the people 1/2 of the time.
Nevermind, I'm not sorry.
If you're going to set a rediculous standard, you can't expect everyone else to fall in line. Their score is .2 off from the average on this site, and .3 off from the Metacritic average... which means they're pretty much on target.
Im seeing a trend of people saying "copy and paste" but I don't understand why. What design did they copy and paste in Rift? Give me some expamles but I feel like the game makes some good choices for environments, sounds and even the score is good. The features in the game are not anything new such as the guild system, public grouping and the UI but if Rift didn't have the features people would complain about that.
Finally you say they didn't move forward with them but I think your wrong. Yes they have a public group but they made it to where rifts would appear all over the map. So you can group up and stop invasions, close rifts and enter dungeons. No other game is doing that. The UI has incorporated many ideas that are used as addons like the damage and health meters and the smart targeting. The guild system took WAR's system a bit further by adding perks for crafting, dungeons, and pvp. So in my opinion any game coming out is going to have these features because they work and not because they are copying paste. There is alot of imagination in RIFT and its sad that people can't see it.
For me is for now with good potential to become first. But if I consider this was most fluid start ever, how polished was at day 1 .... could be easily considered best on market. After long time one game where i feel at home, when playing everything feels as one would excpect.
For the sake of me being bored, I made a list of This site vote Vs Metacritic. here is what emerged:
Everquest: 7.8 Vs 85
Everquest 2: 7.9 Vs 83
Age of Conan: 7.0 Vs 80
Aion: 8.7 Vs 76
DC Universe Online: 8.0 vs 72
City of Heroes: 8.3 Vs 85
Dark age of camelot: 7.5 Vs 88
Darkfall: 7.2 vs 45 (but not enough reviews to count)
D&D online: 8.0 Vs 74
EVE online: 8.5 Vs 88 (counting the special edition release and not the original release)
FF XI: 6.5 Vs 85
FF XIV: - Vs 49
Guild wars: 8.1 vs 89
LOTRO: 8.5 vs 86
Ragnarok: 6.6 vs 79
Rift: 8.7 vs 84
Runes of magic: 7.7 vs 71
Ryzom: 7.3 vs 64
STO: 7.4 Vs 66
SWG: 6.8 Vs 71
UO: 7.8 Vs 59-74 (so many xpansions and re-releases, so for metacritic there is the lowest and highest rating for this)
Vanguard: 7.6 vs 68
WAR: 7.5 vs 86
WoW: 8.1 vs 93
A lot of numbers. What can we extrapolate from this?
Well, for one, that MMORPG's numbers seems to be more average than metacritic, that is a feat, I tell you as we do not have anything under 6.5 or higher than 8.7. A 2 points spread out of 10.
What also we can see is that the top games by metacritic are, in ranking order:
WoW - 93
Guild wars - 89
DAoC, EVE - 88
Lotro - WAR - 86
FFXI, CoH - 85
ALL of these received LESS points from MMO than from metacritic (remember metacritic is an average of dozens of reviews across many sources, including magzines, online sites etc). Even EVE, long considered the top game here winning game of the year several times, got less than 88 with 8.5. Some cases have a bigger gap than others (FFXI leads with a 2 points gap).
The top games by MMO are:
Rift, Aion - 8.7
LOTRO, EVE - 8.5
City of Heroes - 8.3
WoW, Guild Wars - 8.1
DC universe, DDO - 8.0
Now here is a more varied beast, but the top games got significantly less on metacritic than here.
Conclusions:
The only thing that can be said after seeing these numbers is that MMO uses a too small gap for their votes. A 2 points gap is too little, start to give 4s and 2s even to relatively big releases and also give 9s and 10s. Alternatively, take the 2 point spread and make it a 10 point spread, so FFXI would be a 1 and Rift a 10 or a 9.5. Most of these disparities can be counted on that and personal preference of the reviewer. It is puzzling how EVE got so little when it was clearly a favorite and how RIFT and Aion got so high votes when the biggest thing going for them was a polished launch... that should not, by itself, give top score to a game.
"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime"
But Vesavius, those kind of games do not exist. There are a handful fo titles with elements of a deeper game; EvE, FE (that's now more thempark I hear), DF,UO. But they either look very old or are incomplete for what modern console and social networking types want to play. No game like that is going to get major funding so they all now look second rate.
So we are left with chossing the best of these themepark MMO's. Rift ticks the box.
I get what you are saying, but I would rather just not play MMOs until one delivers more of what I am looking for. GW2 looks to be a pretty brave and imaginitive themepark game in a lot of ways, and one that dosent see 'fluff' as wasted effort, so I will def try that, and Archeage has tons of ambition on paper. We will see how that shapes up closer to the day. Of the two, AA right now looks closer to what will get me playing this genre again on a long term basis.
If it fails to deliver, well, theres Skyrim and other solo games upcoming that imo do the job way better and deliver a way more immersive and fun (for me) experience then solo quest grind MMOs. I have gone way past the point where it's MMOs or nothing
There was nothing deep about UO...
Rifts opening on your head are only fun for so long before they get boring. When you can easily level a character to "end game" in a very short period of time, yes people are going to complain. Rift was promoted as "the game doesn't really start until endgame". That "end game" turned out to be another gear grind dungeon run treadmill that people are tired of. The world Trion created is WAY to small. You can be at level 20 in less than a days worth of playtime AS A CASUAL PLAYER. So you can complete 40% of the game in 1 day. Name any other MMO thats has lasted more than a few months where you could complete 40% of the content in 1 day.
Everything in Rift is WAY WAY to easy to have any real longevity. You get all the souls for each calling, so there is no point in having more than 4 characters. At that point, almost all of those characters will be 50 in a few weeks (if you are VERY casual). Then what? Grind the same dungeons you ran while leveling? No thanks.
As I've posted in other threads, here and on Rifts forums, I did quite alot in the first 30 or so days of my "free month". I was so bored with the game that I un-subbed before the subs kicked in. In beta I was pushing Rift to alot of my friends from previous games, most came to try the beta and liked it. Most of those same players have already left the game due to boredom. They all pretty much said the same things.... leveling is TOO EASY and once at 50, it's dungeons or broken pvp or log out. Why should anyone pay for something they won't play?