Rift has everything going for it except the dull combat and animations that go along with it. As dumb as it may sound its a great game minus the terrible combat.
Playing Rift on the side at the moment. Most of the game is better than average, but nothing special. I think most of the dissociation comes from the souls. It borrows WoWs procs and triggers combat, but none of the souls really feel special. EQ2 and WoW had really fleshed out classes, with lore and individual looks and spells. Rift feels more like an RPG simulator than an actual RPG for me. Honestly if EQ2 had the same F2P model as Rift I would be playing that instead, but can't be bothered forking out $40 for an expansion when a new one (and EQN) are due soon.
Originally posted by Vigg I'm trying Rift again, haven't really played since launch. On paper, Rift has everything that I find interesting in an MMO, including housing. But for some reason, I'm finding the gameplay, especially combat, to be very bland and uninspiring. I can't put my finger on what it is. Possibly the washed-out graphics, the armor models and the combat animations? Anyone else have the same issue?
You are absolutely touching the subject. I have made a handful of threads on their forums in the past highlighting the combat animations. Despite rift being a game where the devs actually are "listening"/replying, they never gave any feedback on these issues. At least one would hope for some toning for thhe expansion but it never did.
RIft's engine is also quite special since objects not far away will instantly pop up infront of you, which for some can break immersion. Rift may have a lot of interesting features, but in the end, it's a classic MMORPG that lacks the little extra in some deptartments. People today are picky and they want that special something, it's just what MMORPG society we live in today as there are so many options out there to compare to.
As a PvPer I never got to fully enjoy the gameplay as they never offered any unique modes/ways to progress other than the long "grind". Grind is good I suppose and inevitabile, but it is the way it is presented and done that is the dealbreaker.
Originally posted by Heafstagg Yeah I feel the exact same way. I really want to enjoy RIFT but as soon as I start doing combat I get instantly bored. I can't really put my finger on it..
The combat animations are some of the worst in the history of the genre. Really wish they would of put more emphasis on making the animations fluid and more precise. Swinging a 2handed weapon is atrocious and it is a primary reason why I quit the game and can't go back.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Don't worry, I find it bland too. It's just personal preference, though I disagree with it being anywhere as fun as Wotlk. Like I've said, I don't think it's a BAD game, it's just that I've already done so much that the game offers in other, better games.
The Soul System could have been a shining jewel in the MMO crown. Had it been properly implemented. I think it was developed OK, but never properly tweaked and balanced, What could and should have been a truly "A-la-carte" build your own class- system turned out to be the same old cookie cutter "This spec is best" class system we've already dealt with for years. IF only Trion had properly balanced the talents so each Soul had it's ability to either stand on it's own or synergize with others but that talents could be more mixed and matched. For example. If you'd just come over from WoW and say you liked the Death Kinight. Theoretically, there are Warrior souls and talents that could emulate a similar playstyle. But this didn't happen. You couldn't pair up those souls together effectively. It should have been that you could pick any combination of Souls you wanted and come out with a viable build. And I don't mean haphazardly throwing talentpoints at the trees as if were a game of darts, but a well constructed build should have been available from any combination of Souls.
I learned this the hard way after I leveled a mage using the Necro, Lock and Chloro souls. Basically levled as what we'd know as the Warlock Class. Well, it worked great for leveling. DoT based DPS, Mage/Rogue/Warrior based pet summons and throw in a bit of self healing and regen into the mix. Very good and viable playstyle. Only. There was no place for it in Endgame. In a Raid guild, I was either Full Pyro DPS or Chloro Healer. I didn't want either of those so I dumped my class at 50 and started over. Of Course, that was also after a few months hiatus to "cool off" from being pissed. LOL
You are probably finding it bland because its graphic style isn't as cartoonish as a lot of games out there. WoW, SWTOR for example have a lot of bright colours and flashing lights (or shoulder pads) to attract your attention. Rift doesn't really have this it is more muted.
The questing is also very generic, especially after playing SWTOR or TSW with fully voiced quest givers. Rift I tend to run up, accept the quest then later look and see what I have to do.
I started Rift during beta, preordered, maxed my toon and tier armor in less than a week after release, and haven't been back since. You're not the only one that found it bland. Some of us miss challenge and goals in our games.
It's as fun as a budget package holiday on the Costa del Sol with warm-bitter-serving 'Queen Victoria' bars full of Beckham-tattooed shaven monsters stuffing their faces with curry and chips and pristine beaches with identical plastic deck chairs topped with dangerously tanned Northern people who shouldn't tan. In short, it's not unless your requirements are fairly piss-shallow.
It's not really the gameplay that makes it bland for me, but the entire presentation of the game. Story models animations world, best way to describe I think would be that it's in an uncanny valley, just can't connect with the game.
Most likely you are just tired of WoW themepark MMOs. Rift for me was just too much a rehash of WoW which I played for years, game might be great but for me it's too much of the same ol' same ol'. For me I suppose I am just to tired of WoW or WoW clones. GW2 I have fun with because the combat and mechanics are completely different.
Sounds like you simpely tired of the typical WoW based themeparl MMOs.
Maybe. But when I go back to WoW for a few months at a time, usually at expansion releases, I still find it fun and engaging...
Odd since to me Rift is WoW without the suck. WoW has involved into an infantile game whereas Rift sort of cloned WoW before it started to slide into pathetic and has grown from there. And there's way more to do in Rift. I do find the armor and races (all basically human variants) to be bland but that shouldn't impact combat. WoW has more interesting looking characters and combat animations.
I find Rift combat fine but having played TERA I now find pretty much all tab-target wacamole combat to be pretty weak in comparison. GW2's combat is in between and is ok, but the skills, classes, and especially grouping in GW2 are horribly boring and limited. NW goes for action style TERA combat but gives you target assist to make it approach a WoW-like state of for idiots.
Another thing about Rift is the macro system - which any player with a clue would be using. It shrinks your hotbar and amplifies the button mashing and is almost necessary to be efficient (and avoid hotbar overload). WoW's macros work very differently (at one point the worked the same as in Rift but Bliz considere it exploitve and changed the system) and you can't just stack 20 attacks in one macro to create a few macros that encapsulate the bulk of your skills. If you're using macros to be efficient it might make combat feel less engaging since you make far fewer meaningless decisions for generic combat.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
I played it for the first two months at launch and I found it extremely underwhelming as well.
The combat was boring and stale (I played several types of characters, got the same feeling with them all). The content felt very uninspired and uninteresting. The PvP wasn't engaging enough to want to keep doing it. Overall the game just felt very meh.
They did get the polish down. You didn't run into a lot of unfinished areas, or broken quests/skills, or just plain rough around the edges feeling. But it was almost like they spent all of their time doing what's been done and making sure it was polished as opposed to making anything new and interesting.
I had a group of friends who all played at launch and everyone of them stopped in 1-3 months.
From reading these boards I thought I was the only one that thought Rift was an uninspiring, bland, soulless MMORPG but it seems not. Trion and Rift seem to get a big thumbs up from many MMO players but I too found the game like the OP. I played in beta and was bored in a few hours so did not buy the game but about a year later Raptr offered me a free copy so I grabbed it and gave the game another go, it took me about 20 minutes after getting out of the starter zone to become incredibly bored I even tried to see what had changed in the game by talking in general chat, I got a couple of answers of not much, coupled that with the dead zones I logged out and I haven't been back since.
Rift was all promise and zero delivery, a cheap WoW knock off with nothing to set it apart from any other game with poorly executed systems, sound is generic, graphics are the same, combat is dull, world design in painfully linear, major cities are a joke (One GW2 home city is three times the size of Sanctum and there 5 home cities and a neutral one in Tyria), Rifts are PQ's, they never change and always spawn in the same spot, dynamic they are not, soul system is just WoW talent trees split apart and called "souls" (they changed that a bit I know), Crafting is pointless, the list goes on and on. I cannot see the f2p transition working and with the massive failure of Defiance I worry about Archeage being properly converted.
Couldn't have said it better myself but these boards are full of nostalgia freaks yearning for another, 'golden age', which clearly to them DAOC represented. Trion get a free pass because of their links to the old Mythic devs, there seems to be no other explanation for why such a bland game isn't critised more.
no replayability whatsoever, due to the lack of starting regions
no choices possible where to continue questing, you just keep running from one reason to the next, and can't decide anything
I like the models of the characters and enemies, but the landscape itself looks somehow very sterile
the quests are to 99% always the same
I don't know. I log on, I play a bit, I accept some more quests, and they are always the same, and I immediately get bored and log off again. Maybe it's because I'm not part of a guild. I don't really know any players of Rift. But then again... I have no motivation to be in a guild.
I guess what I miss the most is the lack of exploration. Compare it to 10 year old WoW. Even when that started, I had choices to make where to go to. When I turned level 15 or something, as horde, would I explore the forests of the Ashen Vale? Would I go into the whatsitcalled Mountains west of the Barrens? Would I explore the southern Barrens? Would I move over to the other continent, and have a look at Hillsbrad?
And those are the choices of the basic WoW, without any expansions, 10 years ago, and of just one faction, at one point of the game. I don't have any choices whatsoever in Rift.
Even if Rift has now, due to it's expansions, more content than Vanilla WoW, it doesn't matter, because leveling up in Rift is, to me, a horrible bore. All the end game content is absolutely irrelevant for me if I never get there because I fell asleep on my keyboard.
Most likely you are just tired of WoW themepark MMOs. Rift for me was just too much a rehash of WoW which I played for years, game might be great but for me it's too much of the same ol' same ol'. For me I suppose I am just to tired of WoW or WoW clones. GW2 I have fun with because the combat and mechanics are completely different.
Sounds like you simpely tired of the typical WoW based themeparl MMOs.
Yeah, that was my feeling too about Rift.. It felt like WoW but only 100 times smaller.. At least with WoW you had 8 starting zones when I canceled, unlike Rift.. Every zone in Rift felt the same for the most part.. and every fight was the same.. No kiting, No CC'ing etc etc.. It was a solo run and gun themepark that I just couldn't take anymore.. End Game was exactly like WoW's and I wasn't going to jump thru those hoops anymore either.. Does Rift even have a true open world dungeon like EQ's Lower Guk? or a castle to explore like Permafrost Keep? Older game worlds were so much more inviting and special
I also had the same exact issue , the combat was uninsteresting for me , evrything was prettymuch very traditional mmo on my frist impressions , i was trying to suck myself in but i couldnt.. but then one day i decided to give it another chance , i quested from lvl 20-30 then imo it got interesting as soon as you discover lots of things , i dont know why but i just got sucked in , i love the many ways of leveling , the dynamic events such as Rifts like evrybody was fighting on big ass monster in the map ,the invasions the makes the map active, the open world pvp when i and my friends had such a blast , The battlegrounds , you know those little things that motivates you to keep going(when i got my lvl 25 mount ).. in fact now i have 1 char at max level and other one at 27 atm..the biggest thing whats important is to be social , be in a guild have fun with others otherwise whats the point of playing an mmo? ) i hope this helps
Originally posted by Vigg I'm trying Rift again, haven't really played since launch. On paper, Rift has everything that I find interesting in an MMO, including housing. But for some reason, I'm finding the gameplay, especially combat, to be very bland and uninspiring. I can't put my finger on what it is. Possibly the washed-out graphics, the armor models and the combat animations? Anyone else have the same issue?
I actually like Final Fantasy 14 better than I do Rift. I just cant put my finger on it exactly. But it just does not interest me at all. This game has better graphics than FF 14. It has a better battle system. To me, Rift feels like one of those everyday same ole Asian type mmorpgs.
Maybe it is the story line. I think it is cheesy as hell. YoU aRe Reborn and come back from the dead blah blah blah ooooOOOOOoooHH. Infact, this game reminds me of that other Asian mmo where you can fly and have wings and that was boring to me too.
Maybe I am just getting jaded in me old age.
This game is well built and certainly a great mmorpg to play. It's just not for me.
I really hope before designing their next game Trion sees this thread. There is so much wrong with Rift, yet it is things that aren't obvious initially. This thread does a good job at covering a lot of them.
Originally posted by Vigg I'm trying Rift again, haven't really played since launch. On paper, Rift has everything that I find interesting in an MMO, including housing. But for some reason, I'm finding the gameplay, especially combat, to be very bland and uninspiring. I can't put my finger on what it is. Possibly the washed-out graphics, the armor models and the combat animations? Anyone else have the same issue?
I find the combat bland but only as a melee, or maybe its just the class I'm playing who knows... so I role tank to make it a bit more exciting
Community I find horrible - some people shouldn't be allowed to breed and need to know how too communicate to other people properly.
But other than those 2 pints I find it quite enjoyable.
Rifts zones looked good, but they weren't epic. I mean, they were built very well. The woods felt a lot like woods, the areas were pretty dense with things to do, but it didn't feel very epic.
The factions had philosophical differences, but they all looked the same. This is something that WoW got right. You could look at someone and know from looking at them if they were Horde or Alliance, whether they were mounted or not and whether they had high level gear or not.
The eponymous Rifts were dynamic, but they weren't organic. There was also only one way to deal with them. If you happened to be by yourself, you were just stuck waiting for them to go away. It would have been cool if soldiers headed out from the faction cities or something to fight the rifts that got out of hand or that stuck around too long rather than having them just fade away.
I remember reading a lot about how OW PvP was going to have some sort of meaning, but it never really seemed to get off the ground. I think this is because it would have been disruptive to leveling players. So maybe if they had taken that kind of cool territory control scenario and moved it to a max level area with a max level city, it would have worked. Also, I might have kept playing.
The souls were a good idea. It still felt a lot like WoW though. Not nearly as much as SWToR, but still, way too similar for me.
Combat was OK, standard MMORPG stuff. I didn't really expect anything different though, so no biggie.
Crafting, same thing. Standard MMORPG stuff. I didn't really expect anything different, so no biggie. Would be nice to see a theme park game with decent crafting.
I think having epic zones, OW PvP or the crafting could have made the biggest difference in making the game feel a lot "more".
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yes I've only been playing a week and am already having a hard time logging in. I knew it would just be a time waster till other stuff comes out but I'm having a hard time even playing till then. It's just so incredibly generic. I'll give it that it's done with quality for the most part, but everything is just so themepark clone generic. Rifts and invasions are pretty much the only thing of interest and that gets fairly old quick too. After that it's the same old quests, same old shallow crafting, same old monotonous click fishing, same old dungeons and raids, same old achievement system, boring and bland cities / world.
And having said that, I don't fault RIFT too much, they released still in the themepark crazed era and tried to implement something new with the rifts. But man, makes it scary to think that a game like Wildstar is still trying to release another generic themepark clone with it's twist like all of them have (paths and a bit more interesting housing) in this day and age when the trend is going more and more to sandbox and new things than this themepark model. But that's kind of off topic so....... ultimately, yes rift is a bit bland, because it is
Until about a month ago, I had never played Rift or any of the Final Fantasy MMO's.
Since then I have had a taste of both Rift and FFXIV:ARR. Both are undeniable themeparks, that much is clear, and superficially there seem to be quite a few other similarities between the game designs. Both feel technically solid and well-made.
But whereas I'm eagerly looking forward to the (re)launch of FFXIV, I tend to forget that I have Rift installed. Perhaps Rift only "comes into it's own" at much higher levels ? I've heard the same said about FFXIV, but that doesn't bother me in that game, because I'm really enjoying the lower levels already.
Technically, my play experience in both games was the same. I noticed no bugs and my low-level character had no difficulty progressing.
But the world and the "starting experience" in Rift comprehensively failed to excite me or draw me in. If I never logged-in to Rift again, it would not be missed at all.
FFXIV drew me in in completely. It felt like a world (a beautiful one at that) and I was at home almost immediately. I cannot imagine NOT logging-in to that world again.
Comments
You are absolutely touching the subject. I have made a handful of threads on their forums in the past highlighting the combat animations. Despite rift being a game where the devs actually are "listening"/replying, they never gave any feedback on these issues. At least one would hope for some toning for thhe expansion but it never did.
RIft's engine is also quite special since objects not far away will instantly pop up infront of you, which for some can break immersion. Rift may have a lot of interesting features, but in the end, it's a classic MMORPG that lacks the little extra in some deptartments. People today are picky and they want that special something, it's just what MMORPG society we live in today as there are so many options out there to compare to.
As a PvPer I never got to fully enjoy the gameplay as they never offered any unique modes/ways to progress other than the long "grind". Grind is good I suppose and inevitabile, but it is the way it is presented and done that is the dealbreaker.
The combat animations are some of the worst in the history of the genre. Really wish they would of put more emphasis on making the animations fluid and more precise. Swinging a 2handed weapon is atrocious and it is a primary reason why I quit the game and can't go back.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I enjoy the game . Yes I would rather play a sandbox but there are none that are quality at the moment .
Until then RIFT is fun and even tho I can play The Secret World for free I choose RIFT .
Also RIFT is the only MMO that I have gone back to after leaving .
This
The Soul System could have been a shining jewel in the MMO crown. Had it been properly implemented. I think it was developed OK, but never properly tweaked and balanced, What could and should have been a truly "A-la-carte" build your own class- system turned out to be the same old cookie cutter "This spec is best" class system we've already dealt with for years. IF only Trion had properly balanced the talents so each Soul had it's ability to either stand on it's own or synergize with others but that talents could be more mixed and matched. For example. If you'd just come over from WoW and say you liked the Death Kinight. Theoretically, there are Warrior souls and talents that could emulate a similar playstyle. But this didn't happen. You couldn't pair up those souls together effectively. It should have been that you could pick any combination of Souls you wanted and come out with a viable build. And I don't mean haphazardly throwing talentpoints at the trees as if were a game of darts, but a well constructed build should have been available from any combination of Souls.
I learned this the hard way after I leveled a mage using the Necro, Lock and Chloro souls. Basically levled as what we'd know as the Warlock Class. Well, it worked great for leveling. DoT based DPS, Mage/Rogue/Warrior based pet summons and throw in a bit of self healing and regen into the mix. Very good and viable playstyle. Only. There was no place for it in Endgame. In a Raid guild, I was either Full Pyro DPS or Chloro Healer. I didn't want either of those so I dumped my class at 50 and started over. Of Course, that was also after a few months hiatus to "cool off" from being pissed. LOL
Here are 3 reasons
1. Graphics - very hard to look at after 30 minutes of play
2. Fluidity - a little on the rough side
3. You have a heightened sense of expectation after playing WoW.
You are probably finding it bland because its graphic style isn't as cartoonish as a lot of games out there. WoW, SWTOR for example have a lot of bright colours and flashing lights (or shoulder pads) to attract your attention. Rift doesn't really have this it is more muted.
The questing is also very generic, especially after playing SWTOR or TSW with fully voiced quest givers. Rift I tend to run up, accept the quest then later look and see what I have to do.
I do like the dungeons and PvP in Rift however.
The Enlightened take things Lightly
Odd since to me Rift is WoW without the suck. WoW has involved into an infantile game whereas Rift sort of cloned WoW before it started to slide into pathetic and has grown from there. And there's way more to do in Rift. I do find the armor and races (all basically human variants) to be bland but that shouldn't impact combat. WoW has more interesting looking characters and combat animations.
I find Rift combat fine but having played TERA I now find pretty much all tab-target wacamole combat to be pretty weak in comparison. GW2's combat is in between and is ok, but the skills, classes, and especially grouping in GW2 are horribly boring and limited. NW goes for action style TERA combat but gives you target assist to make it approach a WoW-like state of for idiots.
Another thing about Rift is the macro system - which any player with a clue would be using. It shrinks your hotbar and amplifies the button mashing and is almost necessary to be efficient (and avoid hotbar overload). WoW's macros work very differently (at one point the worked the same as in Rift but Bliz considere it exploitve and changed the system) and you can't just stack 20 attacks in one macro to create a few macros that encapsulate the bulk of your skills. If you're using macros to be efficient it might make combat feel less engaging since you make far fewer meaningless decisions for generic combat.
Premium MMORPGs do not feature built-in cheating via cash for gold pay 2 win. PLAY to win or don't play.
I played it for the first two months at launch and I found it extremely underwhelming as well.
The combat was boring and stale (I played several types of characters, got the same feeling with them all). The content felt very uninspired and uninteresting. The PvP wasn't engaging enough to want to keep doing it. Overall the game just felt very meh.
They did get the polish down. You didn't run into a lot of unfinished areas, or broken quests/skills, or just plain rough around the edges feeling. But it was almost like they spent all of their time doing what's been done and making sure it was polished as opposed to making anything new and interesting.
I had a group of friends who all played at launch and everyone of them stopped in 1-3 months.
Couldn't have said it better myself but these boards are full of nostalgia freaks yearning for another, 'golden age', which clearly to them DAOC represented. Trion get a free pass because of their links to the old Mythic devs, there seems to be no other explanation for why such a bland game isn't critised more.
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
I keep trying to like Rift. But...
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Yeah, that was my feeling too about Rift.. It felt like WoW but only 100 times smaller.. At least with WoW you had 8 starting zones when I canceled, unlike Rift.. Every zone in Rift felt the same for the most part.. and every fight was the same.. No kiting, No CC'ing etc etc.. It was a solo run and gun themepark that I just couldn't take anymore.. End Game was exactly like WoW's and I wasn't going to jump thru those hoops anymore either.. Does Rift even have a true open world dungeon like EQ's Lower Guk? or a castle to explore like Permafrost Keep? Older game worlds were so much more inviting and special
I also had the same exact issue , the combat was uninsteresting for me , evrything was prettymuch very traditional mmo on my frist impressions , i was trying to suck myself in but i couldnt.. but then one day i decided to give it another chance , i quested from lvl 20-30 then imo it got interesting as soon as you discover lots of things , i dont know why but i just got sucked in , i love the many ways of leveling , the dynamic events such as Rifts like evrybody was fighting on big ass monster in the map ,the invasions the makes the map active, the open world pvp when i and my friends had such a blast , The battlegrounds , you know those little things that motivates you to keep going(when i got my lvl 25 mount
).. in fact now i have 1 char at max level and other one at 27 atm..the biggest thing whats important is to be social , be in a guild have fun with others otherwise whats the point of playing an mmo? 
) i hope this helps
ps: i never played wow
I actually like Final Fantasy 14 better than I do Rift. I just cant put my finger on it exactly. But it just does not interest me at all. This game has better graphics than FF 14. It has a better battle system. To me, Rift feels like one of those everyday same ole Asian type mmorpgs.
Maybe it is the story line. I think it is cheesy as hell. YoU aRe Reborn and come back from the dead blah blah blah ooooOOOOOoooHH. Infact, this game reminds me of that other Asian mmo where you can fly and have wings and that was boring to me too.
Maybe I am just getting jaded in me old age.
This game is well built and certainly a great mmorpg to play. It's just not for me.
End of line.
I really hope before designing their next game Trion sees this thread. There is so much wrong with Rift, yet it is things that aren't obvious initially. This thread does a good job at covering a lot of them.
I find the combat bland but only as a melee, or maybe its just the class I'm playing who knows... so I role tank to make it a bit more exciting
Community I find horrible - some people shouldn't be allowed to breed and need to know how too communicate to other people properly.
But other than those 2 pints I find it quite enjoyable.
Rifts zones looked good, but they weren't epic. I mean, they were built very well. The woods felt a lot like woods, the areas were pretty dense with things to do, but it didn't feel very epic.
The factions had philosophical differences, but they all looked the same. This is something that WoW got right. You could look at someone and know from looking at them if they were Horde or Alliance, whether they were mounted or not and whether they had high level gear or not.
The eponymous Rifts were dynamic, but they weren't organic. There was also only one way to deal with them. If you happened to be by yourself, you were just stuck waiting for them to go away. It would have been cool if soldiers headed out from the faction cities or something to fight the rifts that got out of hand or that stuck around too long rather than having them just fade away.
I remember reading a lot about how OW PvP was going to have some sort of meaning, but it never really seemed to get off the ground. I think this is because it would have been disruptive to leveling players. So maybe if they had taken that kind of cool territory control scenario and moved it to a max level area with a max level city, it would have worked. Also, I might have kept playing.
The souls were a good idea. It still felt a lot like WoW though. Not nearly as much as SWToR, but still, way too similar for me.
Combat was OK, standard MMORPG stuff. I didn't really expect anything different though, so no biggie.
Crafting, same thing. Standard MMORPG stuff. I didn't really expect anything different, so no biggie. Would be nice to see a theme park game with decent crafting.
I think having epic zones, OW PvP or the crafting could have made the biggest difference in making the game feel a lot "more".
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Yes I've only been playing a week and am already having a hard time logging in. I knew it would just be a time waster till other stuff comes out but I'm having a hard time even playing till then. It's just so incredibly generic. I'll give it that it's done with quality for the most part, but everything is just so themepark clone generic. Rifts and invasions are pretty much the only thing of interest and that gets fairly old quick too. After that it's the same old quests, same old shallow crafting, same old monotonous click fishing, same old dungeons and raids, same old achievement system, boring and bland cities / world.
And having said that, I don't fault RIFT too much, they released still in the themepark crazed era and tried to implement something new with the rifts. But man, makes it scary to think that a game like Wildstar is still trying to release another generic themepark clone with it's twist like all of them have (paths and a bit more interesting housing) in this day and age when the trend is going more and more to sandbox and new things than this themepark model. But that's kind of off topic so....... ultimately, yes rift is a bit bland, because it is
Until about a month ago, I had never played Rift or any of the Final Fantasy MMO's.
Since then I have had a taste of both Rift and FFXIV:ARR. Both are undeniable themeparks, that much is clear, and superficially there seem to be quite a few other similarities between the game designs. Both feel technically solid and well-made.
But whereas I'm eagerly looking forward to the (re)launch of FFXIV, I tend to forget that I have Rift installed. Perhaps Rift only "comes into it's own" at much higher levels ? I've heard the same said about FFXIV, but that doesn't bother me in that game, because I'm really enjoying the lower levels already.
Technically, my play experience in both games was the same. I noticed no bugs and my low-level character had no difficulty progressing.
But the world and the "starting experience" in Rift comprehensively failed to excite me or draw me in. If I never logged-in to Rift again, it would not be missed at all.
FFXIV drew me in in completely. It felt like a world (a beautiful one at that) and I was at home almost immediately. I cannot imagine NOT logging-in to that world again.
It's all just personal taste really...