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Bored by Rift? Something to think about.
(Note: This is mainly aimed at those who thought the 1-10 experience was too boring to get past)
Thought the 1-10 Rift experience was kinda boring? Me too. You only had a few skills to use, and you were completely railroaded into following the quests. Unoriginal and boring and a WoW-clone, right?
Well... sort of. Here's the thing though, and this could apply to a lot of the other MMO's coming out as well: In Rift, the level 1-10 zone is the starter zone. It is meant to introduce a completely new player who has never played an MMO before, to the concepts and workings of this MMO.
I think that label doesn't really apply to anyone who comes to this site. We're all experienced MMO players here, often of multiple games over the span of many years. We already know how an MMO plays, especially one that isn't radically different from the other games on the market. Simply put, the start zone isn't designed for us.
Someone asked in another thread why MMO's should be given any leeway in regards to 'capturing your attention'. Well, in single player games, you usually have tutorial levels as well - some are good, and a lot definitely aren't. But you power through the tutorial anyways, because you know the game will properly start once you're done. In my opinion, the starter zones in MMO's are exactly the same: You can't really tell anything about the game proper until you get out of the starting zone. Sure, some starting zones are awesome (AoC's Tortage is a good example of this), but in most games, starting zones serve only to introduce new players to the genre, and to the game-specific concepts of that particular game.
So for those who are critical of Rift (or other new games coming out for that matter), do yourself a big favor: Get out of the starter zone, and try playing in the actual game for an hour or two before passing judgement.
(And if you still think it sucks after that, well then you have something to base it on, and your opinion will be an informed one, rather than borderline trolling. Everybody wins!)
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Comments
In other games you can say Yes or No to a tutorial and if you do it, then it's only one mission.
Not 10 levels.
In most MMOs you can't skip tutorials. Sometimes it's advisable not to skip them because they give good starting gear (Fallen Earth comes to mind).
At least cite some examples.
Now lets be honest, the first 10 levels in rift take naff all time to do. Plus they not only give you the required information to play the game they introduce you to the world , it's setting and it does that very well in my opinion.
to the OP. you convinced me. If I get into the next beta, I will take my lvl 9 farther
- 10 levels is maybe 30 minutes to an hour of playing though, which isn't all that much for a game with the complexity of your average MMO.
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for some reason i feel games should be fun from the start.
i guess i'll give it one more chance 'cause i'm level 9 or something.
die.
To be honest, the game captured me from the start. So if it didn't capture you by now, it may not capture you at all.
Hmm, this post has made me thinking. guess i give it another go since i didn't dislike it , it just didn't do the trick in the short time i had.
To OP: yeah you got a good point, my self usualy does 20 lvls in a game befor i decide to continue or quit.
tho lol like DDO i did 3 lvls and uninstalled, bout the worst game i ever played, right on whit Perfect World (my opinion atleast:D)
Now im dawdling in Runes Of Magic and having fun (currently lvl 12) and i find the starter zone half tutorialengaging is to my liking.
But yeah, starter zones arent for experienced MMO players, usualy find MMOs to be fun 30- ish lvls.
Just x-ing my fingers atm hoping for a Rift beta inv (gona pre-order Monday in anycase).
Thanks for the positive responses guys, I'm glad you see the point I was trying to make. I have enjoyed Rift so far myself, going in with no expectations, and being positively surprised by the quality of the game so far. I don't think the game is "the next big thing" or anything like that, but I like how solid of a game it is already, and I'll be playing it for at least a couple months - more if their endgame (which they will be launching with) proves to be fun and challenging. But even only playing for a couple months, the 75-ish dollars I'll have to spend for the game and a month's sub will be good value for money (Comes out to a buck twenty per day, which is pretty good value for money entertainment-wise, even if you only play an hour a day on average).
But, that's just my opinion - You might still dislike the game after getting out of the starter zones, but at least you'll actually have experienced what it's about, rather than just the tutorial. I've disliked plenty of MMO's that I have tried, but I always make sure to at least get into the actual game-world and seeing how life past the starter zone is.
Originally posted by Debiru82
tho lol like DDO i did 3 lvls and uninstalled, bout the worst game i ever played, right on whit Perfect World (my opinion atleast:D)
- I actually liked DDO, but I'm an old-school tabletop D&D player, so that might have had something to do with it. The main draw for me was the multiclassing options, which doesn't come into play properly until a few levels in. I loooove making freaky multiclass builds. Granted, DDO wasn't good enough to keep my attention in the long term, but I did have fun with it for a couple months, and I'll probably go back and play it every now and then - it's still on my HD, and up to date and such.
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This guy speaks the truth. Hartsman backs this up in the Massively interview a few weeks back.
This was part of their motivation for going with the traditional UI and gameplay. They wanted to build on an established foundation, so the entrance level to the game can be lower. This is why the first 10 levels are very standard. After level 10 you're introduced to Rifts/invasions; while the traditional questing is continued. Crafting can also begin at this time and it also is traditional.
Level 17 you start to head into instances and should have your 3rd soul by now. Around this time you can also viably cut your teeth on Warfronts.
By 20ish you're looking at more souls and a few role builds. The second tier zones offer more varied quests and exploration. You get a slightly more difficult instance also. Experimenting of crafting (ie- Runebreaking and Scavenging) offers more variety to use and reuse materials.
By late 20s early thirties, you're looking at a slew of souls and 3 roles that you can build three different specs from and have in an instant to switch from at any time. The mobs have steadily increased in difficulty and abilities. The Rifts have gotten more advanced. Scarlet Gorge offers even more exploration. The instance for this area forces you to work together. Warfronts can be a focus for PvPers and the Gorge is a contested zone, so World PvP is a definite possibility.
If you notice, the game builds upon itself. It continues to step up the complexity and introducing new aspects as you level.
Actually, as far as souls is concerned, you leave the tutorial area with three souls. By level 13-15 you should be headed to Sanctum (as Guardian) to grab the quests for the remaining souls. At the latest by level 17 you should have all 8 available. If you started doing battlegrounds at level 10, you should also have your PvP soul well before 20.
Regarding roles (multispeccing), you should have enough money for your second role at level 12-15, enough for your third role slot at 22-25 (considering you spend a lot for a mount at 20) and for the fourth at 30 or so.
At least in the beta it's like this - I made sure to get all my soul quests squared away as quickly as possible, and with the massive number of rifts and invasions in beta, this was very fast to do. I even made sure to do a soul spec specifically for rifting, and one for questing. Trion might change the rate of soul acquisition for live, but we'll see how it goes. It makes sense to have you get souls faster in beta, because they want you to experiment with builds, and actually test them out.
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I find this a probleme with MMO's, "It won't be fun till you get to level 10, 20, 30, etc..." or " It won't be fun until you played a month of it." Hear the second one a lot for Eve. I think there are more immediate problems with MMO's, but if someone could make a game fun sooner I think it would have good success. MMOs are the only type of Entertainment that takes a long time to get fun in my opinion.
It would be nice if a game came out that gave you options at the start, not just "made for people that never played MMO's," or "Gives zero direction at all." They do it to single player games, and I don't see why they can't do it for MMO's?
-I want a Platformer MMO
They actually changed soul acquisition from beta 3 to what you've experienced in beta 4 and 5. In beta 3 and before you were getting the souls a lot slower, but that changed due to beta testers input.
Simply because in single player games you can choose the difficulty level and even in some single player games you can adjust the difficulty even in mid game.
I agree a game should have me addicted from the start..... To be honest I think I only got to level 2 or 3 before I uninstalled. I know the game wasn't trying to bring anything new to the table except for maybe the rifts part. Thats fine and dandy but to me but I wan't some new combat and UI.
To me this game feels like just about every other MMO on the market. They say if it ain't broke don't fix it, but to me that kind of gameplay is broken and old. I felt as if I was playing Warhammer again or WoW or LOTRO or add whatever other games that share a very similar UI and combat.
Maybe I just need to quit MMO's for a while, or maybe a company needs to have the balls to make something new and not copy like everyone else.. To bad FFXIV didn't deliver, I really hope WoD is crazy different, cuz I don't think TSW will give me much more than the setting.
Well, pretty much all MMOs have been using a variation of Asheron's Call 2 interface. That's why it feels that the UI is similar to all these games. WoW copied it directly from AC2 and LOTRO was made by the same company that made AC2, so it's natural to have the same/similar design.
I suppose that developers can try and remove UI elements and make it more spartan, but then we'll stumble upon those who want to add all these addons and meters and statistics. Things that by all means are secondary, but you still find people that like them.
Personally I want to see a UI that works. Whether it's something similar to AC2 UI or something different is irrelevant. What I don't want to see is a UI that doesn't function unless you overload it with addons.
I think you might need to take a break from MMOs. You only got to level 2 or 3 and you KNOW that the game wasn't bringing anything new to the table except the rifts part?
Well, some current MMO's have the "it won't be fun until you get to endgame" thing - The most prominent of these being WoW of course - and that's way too drastic for me. In Rift though, I was having fun as soon as I got out of the starter zone, and I wasn't hating it before that.
...and yeah, the criteria for enjoying EVE seems to be "play the game for at least a couple weeks to build up skills, get into a player-run corp, and get enough stuff that you can afford to lose it." I did all of these things (played for 3-4 months), and I actually did like the game a good deal, but in the end, I'm enough of a carebear that the PvP turned me off playing. I still think EVE is a good game, and it does what it sets out to do very well, but it's just not for me.
As for why MMO's seemingly have this barrier of entry, I think it has to do with the fact that the game has to appeal to as many people as possible, and to do that, the company making the game usually has to go for things such as instanced starter zones and forced tutorials. As an experienced MMO player, sure it sucks, because you've done it all before, but as an experienced MMO player, you should also be able to get past that point in very little time.
LOTRO, before they went F2P had an option for skipping the starter area - provided you had gone through that specific starter area at least once - Meaning that to 'unlock' the full skipping, you'd have to get at least one human/hobbit through, and one dwarf/elf through. They took this option away for zone clutter reasons though, so now you have to go through the starter areas with all your characters.
Single-player games are much easier to tailor to an individual, and since you only have to deal with that one player, it's also a lot easier to make tutorials fun and engaging - Take Mass Effect 1 for example - It does a good job of getting you introduced to the storyline, the bad guys, and the controls during the tutorial level, pretty much to the point that when you're going for your second playthrough, you don't mind it because it's just like the rest of the game - only with annoying pop-ups, that you can turn off.
Could this work in MMO's? Sure it could, it worked extremely well for Tortage in Age of Conan. Problem was, it worked so well that it left players severely dissapointed when they were let out into the main game world, because it lacked the same amount of polish. Tortage was probably my favorite starting zone of any MMO currently out there, but I would much rather have it be the other way around when we're talking about MMO's - boring starter zone, and engaging main world, because after all, that's where you'll be spending the majority of your time as an MMO player.
...If we're lucky though, Bioware will come through for us and offer a game that is engaging all the way through, from start to endgame - But we'll see once they launch, or have more accessible betas. In the meantime, Rift will be a good filler for me - perhaps even good enough that I'll play it alongside TOR when that comes out.
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I got to level 25, it was still the same "boring" quest gameplay on rails.
Good enough for a couple of months, but I doubt I'll have the patience to get more than 2 alts through the same stuff.
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
I was quite disappointed by the first 10 levels because it was nothing new. It's once I got passed level 10 and forward that I sat back and said DAMN, now that's what I'm talking about. The best starting area I've ever played was Tortage in AoC. I don't think any game can match it. It was so well done.
Well, the game is designed in such a way that with 4 avatars you'll be covering every single calling and soul combination possible.
Unless of course you want to reroll on the other side of the conflict.
I think your settingyourself up for a very underwhelming game experience if you expect the game to change after level 10. Trion has indicated nothing about later gameplay to suggest the game becomes anything more than it is at level 10.
I played both factions in the last beta, while things look diffrent, its overall the same experience for either side, even the quest reward equipment and rinfs are exactly the same in every way....like that lv 12 2h staff you got on guardian...well its there as a reward for a slightly diffrent quest on defiant.
Just look at it for what it is, a polished game that doesnt try to break any molds or draw outside of any lines. If your typical mmorpg bores you to tears, Rift will bore you to tears...if you enjoy mmorpgs for what they are, you will enjoy rift...especially if you choose the right class....look for pvp balance and class role issues in the next beta, my prediction is that will be the games unraveling..still has yet to be proven as we havent seen endgame or mid game content, but it was there 1-30...some classes as a whole and certain souls were utterly useless in execution.
I don't like any game that starts you out on rails. But I also understand it's just to get you going, so I'm giving Rift a pass on its boring start and going to trust that it gets better in later levels.
The boring start in Rift made me long for Vanguard again... so many starting cities in so many different parts of the world with completely different questlines, lore, races, classes, etc. You could play several different races in Vanguard and never experience any of the same content until you were in your 30s.