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My quick review.
I normally don't start threads and this is on the fence as far as being a Thread starting worthy post. With all the trolls posting negative threads after playing the game for a few hours, I felt I needed to put my opinion out there.
I started in Closed Beta #2.
I rolled a Rogue on Guardian side. At character creation it felt like Aion or Lineage 2. Upon entering the world it felt like Lineage 2 for me. Starter area was enclosed (from a technical standpoint is not a bad idea). Nothing jumped out as revolutionary, graphics were ok, frames per second were low. I exited the starter building and I was immediately hit with a Warhammer feel, much like Chaos starter zone. Again performance was low and graphics were acceptable. Long story short, I played through and I had a ok time. I got to level 15 or so and earned my 3rd soul. I wasn't overly impressed, but I knew I wanted to play more before I started a thread or commented publicly.
I decided to start on the Defiant side. I created a warrior this round. Beastmaster/Champion, Two hand wielding warrior with a pet along side felt fun to me. Defiant side started similar to Guardian side, but this go round felt more fluid. Performance and graphics were better this round. Upon exiting the starter zone, the world felt bigger. I leveled much quicker and found myself in the large zone for level 10-19, I believe its called Freemarch. This zone is beautiful. Graphics really stand out in the more floral and sunlit areas. I don't know if its different for anyone else, but the Defiant 10-20 zone is much more open than the guardian zone. I had a great time specializing my class and trying different builds. I ended up taking Beastmaster/Warlord/Champion/Paladin. The Paladin is a good tank and the Warlord is a good support subclass. I reached level 20 as beta #3 ended.
Beta #4 I created a Defiant Mage. I had read some good things about Warlock/Necro builds. After some playing around, I added Chloromancer as my 3rd soul. After tweaking it a bit this was a great combination. I was primarily Necro, focusing on pet damage. With a few points in Chloro, I got a few great healing spells, along with a couple healing spells from Lock/Necro. The Necro tank pet with my heals and dots was a great combo. I was able to tank elite mobs and multiple npcs with ease. This class was the most durable Cloth class I have ever played and DPS was above average. I continued this character through Beta #5, getting to level 25 or so. Rifts were a blast with this build, just running around chasing Rifts was a blast!!
Performance/Graphics
Beta #2 and Beta #3 felt like most other Open betas. Lower FPS ect.. When beta #4 started I saw huge improvement. On high settings (1650x1080) I was getting 60+fps in nonpopulated areas and a solid 30-40fps in crowded areas. Huge rifts with 20+ people I averaged 28-35fps.(Very acceptable for what was going on)
My system: Intel Quad6600 at 3.0, 4gig 1066ram, GTX280. People were playing the game on 7950gtx systems and I heard of one player on a nvidia 5200, although he was getting about 15-30 fps on low.
The graphics were very nice in the well lit areas. It has a good style to it. It doesn't go to far to the cartoony Wow side and Character models are proportionate without the oversized heads. hands and feet like WoW and Swtor.
In Closing, this game got better and better. I personally have played 10+ AAA betas and this is by far the best Closed beta. This closed beta is better than 90% of retail released games. If there is an acceptable endgame, in my opinion this could easily be the #2 game before SWTOR/GW2 release, and still hold its own after those two behemoths are released.
Comments
My experience with the 5th beta left me disappointed. It wasn't really bad, but there are a few things that I just couldn't like about it.
The races felt very uninspired. Each faction has a human race, an elf race, and a bulky (dwarf versus orc replacement) race. Sure, you can stick some text next to them and say what you want...sure you can give each class some generic special abilities...but that doesn't make the races any better. Its just letters and numbers. Most of the time, I didn't really pay enough attention to what peoples race was to see what race they were...and it didn't matter.
Combat was very generic. We have seen this kind of combat many, many times. Some games don't get it right. Rift does present an adequate combat experience, but its been done many times before. It should be a given now that combat should at least work, but I think that, by now, developers should be trying to make something new, different, and fresh so that we can truly feel at every moment that this game is different than other games.
One other part of combat stuck out for me. Targeting was very limited compared to what I am use to. I spent an average of 5 seconds trying to select a corpse to loot it because sometimes the mouse has to be places somewhere above the enemy. When dealing with things that haven't been recently killed, I found targeting to be a frustrating process of finding an enemy, getting close enough to target it, and then running up to it to bash its head in. When I position my mouse over something, I don't want to spend time making sure my mouse is exactly in the right place...well, this is my experience anyways...
class system feels a bit generic after a while. nothing really shines. After the initial learning curve for the 3 skill tree system, it really just turns into a 4 class game.
I think that the game does get certain things right, like the visual effects for rifts (but not the actual game play mechanics of rifts), or the...um...well the graphics aren't bad (though I did have a problem with a certain graphical oddity...when the camera is at a certain angle, rift and water surface textures don't move with the rest of the map...But that was just me I think.)
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I find it strange that some people are complaining about certain aspects of the game not being "revolutionary" or "new" (such as what the previous poster said about combat). As far as i have seen, Rift has never tried to boast a new or revolutionary combat system, rather a unique class system (which it is, and a very well done system in my personal opinion).
It is like buying a carton of milk and saying "Yea, this is really good milk, but it just isnt chocolate milk... I mean, i know they could add chocolate and it would be so much better."
Well, why do you expect to get chocolate milk, when all that the carton is promising is GOOD, YUMMY , plain old white milk? and let me assure you, it is very yummy indeed
Lewk- Healer of Legacy Gareth
McDee- Spiritmaster of Maelstrom Percival
Murgu- Skald of Mordred
I agree, I am not looking for anything revolutionary and I don't believe most gamers are. They are looking for a fresher feel of their favorite game. Whether they admit it or not.
I would love a mix of SWG(pre-cu) and Asheron's call with all the convenience features of WoW and graphics of Conan.
I agree with you except for the WoW part
There are not enough ideas to make any game different at this point. Rift will have a potential to be a solid MMO, atleast for me.
It is like being married and having sex. Having sex with the same ol' lady in different positions.
It's nice to play a game that isn't full of the silly cartoon graphics of WoW - or nonstop pop culture references in every zone/quest.
And... it has really nice graphics and zone design.
Very true, however the linear one path per faction template really bothers me. Its a very linear game, it feels like its just one big quest chain. This is my only real issue, that and the balancing issues. Oh and the fact that the equipment, at least though quest rewards, is exactly the same, for either faction. I really hope they add some equipment diversity, and not just for rare drops and boss loot.
The questing is linear. But the game world is pretty large.
On defiant side freemarch the 9-20 area is almost too large.
I believe the Guardian side feels a little more restrictive at the same leveling range though.
If you havent had a chance keep Rift on your HD and play through defiant side. its a blast.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Actually, Horizons did this class system years ago, with even more cross-class options. But yeh, I never read any boasting about anything new. My limited experience in B5 was that they imported the best from many sources, and I'm pleased so far. I really don't think there's much left to invent in MMORPG gaming within todays techno restraints.
I only played a Guardian.
It would be nice if there was a second 'Silverwood' area. If anything - it would help with the fun of a rolling a new character... this is something WoW had going for it.
Obviously the lv 1-7 experience is a linear tutorial. I didn't have any problem with it... showed off some features and teaches the basics.
7-15ish... it definitely pushes you towards Sanctum. Once there - I felt things opened up a lot. In fact, both me and my friend got that ... "wait what do I do next" - feeling... because there wasn't a quest obviously leading us to the next hub. So... I headed out exploring. Found the Fae dungeon. Found some quests nearby. Went back to some old territory near the Argent Glade - found more quests. Did those til about lv 19 (with PvP) - then decided I wanted to head off for new scenery and went to Gloamwoods.
I skipped all around Gloamwoods, doing various quests... skipping others... continued with PvP... and went to Gorge at lv 25.
Made it to 30 and really only fooled around in the top half of Gorge.
As I said.. it would be nice if there were more areas for variety. But.. I didn't find the areas to be small or lacking in content.
Also - for anyone reading - when we are talking about 'linear' you aren't on rails... you can walk off to wherever you want... it's one big world, enjoy.
I am not trying to say that Trion didn't deliver on what they said they did. I believe they did. I believe that this game will be very popular. I just don't think that this game is for me.
Then again, my expectations for new games are a little skewed because I am waiting for GW2.
I did play through the defiant side, and I did enjoy it, but the environment is the only thing that kept me playing. Freemarch was an interesting zone.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
Pertaining to combat, what stood out for me more than anything was the astounding number of generic instant cast abilities that every single class has at their disposal. To make a WoW reference (because I know everyone loves WoW comparisons--but let's face it, it's an MMO that most MMO gamers have played at least a little of), every class feels a bit like a BC-Wotlk ret paladin, which even Blizzard admitted had a generally boring combat "rotation." You essentially spam a few key abilities as soon as they come off cooldown, and spend the rest of your time casting a filler spell. Not to mention in Rift you tend to get several abilities that do pretty much the same amount of damage, are all instant cast spells, and all have no cooldown. Tons of action bar clutter, unless you choose to just remove them entirely, which you really might as well do.
On the other hand, I did like how several classes can pitch in to help healing while dpsing. In fact, the most secure dungeon party makeup seems to be to have 2 hybrid dps/healers + 1 tank who has some minor self healing capabilities (which all tanks seem to have) and 2 pure dps. I enjoyed the justicar's "deal damage to proc heals" style, as well as their ability to heal their Righteous Mandate target (the tank) without having to switch off of their dps target. All together it almost provided enough to not bore me by the end of the dungeon run...almost.
I'm guessing you only played a mage with the 'ton of instant cast' comment. Really if your anythign else that isnt' the case at all, and depending on your souls that also isn't the case with a mage every time out either. My Paragon/Champion/Reaver is not an instant cast fiend at all, sure I have some but they are all situational and life saving if you use them at the right time. I have well over 15 attacks/effects I use in every combat I get into. There isnt a 3 power rotation for me, how you can say there is just looks like your playstyle than the games mechanics. I guess if you believe you only need 3-4 to do every job, well then maybe your just not challenging yourself any or haven't tried the rest out.
Oh and on the factions comments, there is a HUGE difference between the 10-19 zones. I actually started on Guardian but felt restricted to a point of annoyance. Switched over to Defiants and now I can't force myself to go back to play my guardian characters. Its that big of a difference. Freemarch is so much better on layout, so is Meridian. Why they decided to split the main city of the Guardians into two parts is beyond me, just another annoyance on my mage there. To have to be in one town for my soul quests and another for my bank and PvP, and spend the time to port/pay each time I want to do the other...just not my idea of a good layout.
Even rifting is a pain in the Guardian side. I can walk off the steps of Meridian and head right for my rift of choice, you can't do that from Sanctuary, good luck going cross zone in a straight line at all there. Half the time you can't even see the mobs your walking into as the elevation changes are so drastic, low elevation mobs your going through at one time may be level 13, go up the hill and they might be 19 with no warning. At least on the Defiant side I can see whats coming up.