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Rift Beta Review
Hello All,
I have played the final beta up to level 20 and explored a little on my ugly "zebra" mount. So my thoughts on the game are as follows:
My Experience:
Lets start with character creation its very poor character creation... Hair styles are terrible (They look better ingame then in the character creation process) ... the races that you can choose from arent the greatest either. Its pretty limited overall.
After creating a character it was pretty straight forward... after I found my way out of the defiants "dungeon"... you move out into the world pick a sub class ... I picked rogue and selected ranger for the tanking pet. It was very easy to follow the quest lines forward which I liked you didnt have to go back to the original quest giver.
You get to the end the first zone and first part of the story... loved the story in this game btw... having to go back into the past to stop Regulos ... and that ugly dragon of his.
Entered Freemarch for the first time... saw a rift in the distance... loved the way the world looks and feels... found myself questing till level 15 without much interuption until I was in the middle of nowhere grinding some mobs when rifts just started opening up everywhere... Elite giants started popping up nearby and the mobs I was grinded were getting killed by the elites so I started dodging in and out of the elites ... so I figure I should go back and turn in these quests I did... Well the npcs are fighting off elites... and eventually die to my disliking... SO I band up together with a few other people and we go after these things. Eventually being able to spend the currency gained from rifts on Planar loot (which is different from regular currency).
What I loved:
- That brings me to RIFT Invasions... these are great! Consider you will be able to open up your own rift content with other players it brings a whole new dimension ... the rifts change the world around it, which I also love... I hope on a pvp server you'll be able to call in rifts to mess with the other faction. I think there is alot of potential with rifts...
- The class system is awesome... Pick one architype (mage, warrior, cleric, rogue) You can combine 3 subclasses under that... you can save any 3 subclasses once you unlock them... so lots of mixing and matching ... then You can save up to 4 total different specs.... so say you wanna have a pvp setup under one... raiding spec under two... pve solo spec under 3 and an alternative pvp spec under 4. Its awesome. Yes there will be balance issues but I think this game will focus on group balance over 1v1 balance.
- PVP related : I like the fact you cant tell what someones subclasses are when your fighting them, you have to see what skills/animations they are using to get an idea.
- UI and World are great
- Grouping.. you can join anyones group at any time without permission... unless they make it private specifically... you can join up with people and quest together very easy and I love that... I love how people band together for rifts... and tagging mobs doesnt matter as long as you contribute... you get loot.
- Eventually when you get high enough the game becomes a little more open I noticed in the next zones... there are fewer hubs.
- Separate gear for pvp and pve
- Pve and Pvp servers being slightly different and will devs will cater to them separately.
- Pve content already established in different tiers at endgame.
- *Love the story line... love how guardians believe in god... and love how defiants are considered heretics by the Guardians and practice science/technology over the gods.
What I didnt like:
- Battleground... Fang of Regulos was lame because the objective can get moved to close to the graveyard pretty quick. I only ever got to try the one battleground so cant comment on the others.
- Character customization and race selection. Limited.
- Some subclasses arent good for leveling which makes sense, but just wish it gave a little bit more advice on when you pick them. People will find that out the hardway.... I only experienced this when playing cleric and warrior... I still made it through the quest lines no problem just felt too slow.
- Early on in Beta 7 one of my characters was deleted when a crash happened.
Concerns going into launch:
- My biggest concerns are people grinding battlegrounds for prestige instead of doing world pvp... as there is not much incentive that I can see for world pvp yet. Except if rifts endgame are still important to the game and players fight over them.
- Servers not being able to handle the high pop servers.
- People hitting max too fast ...
- Server Balance
All in all I was very impressed and will be preordering the game. There is so much to learn in this game... I hope it didnt scare away too many people. I didnt think the experience really started till I experienced my first rift invasion. Thought single rifts were cool but not all that game breaking... rift invasions is where its at.
Comments
Sorry to nitpick one thing out of your whole post, but when the fang is right next to your graveyard you get +1 points per tick. Just recently i was in a game where the other team was getting more points just by killing us when we had the fang near the gy. Its a pretty terrible strategy compared to the +6 in the middle.
Wow ! Thank you! Thats awesome! Never knew!
As per the Fang in Black Garden, moving it towards your graveyard can actually cause you to gimp your team and cause the other team to win. We had a match where the opposing team had the fang for about 80% of the match, but had it so far back they were only getting about 1 point per tick while we were getting 3-5 per kill. Wound up winning the match while only having the fang for a short period of time towards the end.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
Just to make the storyline pop for you even more, Regulos is the dragon.
Well-written review overall.
Playing: FFXIV, EVE
Great review!
Good review. I agree on the pros and the cons.
For me, the Character Creation (talking appearance, not class customization) is just barely sufficient, only because I like so many other elements of the game. They show the game engine can handle morphing the meshes with sliders, but they fail on the variety and quality of the results you can produce. No excuse at all for the sad state of Hair options. When most characters look like siblings and armor looks are limited, at least allow a ton of quality hair to mix up the looks!
Really the only thing that irks me, the rest of my experience is positive.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I Agree with most of what the OP said. Rift is a great game and the end game content will keep max lvl players busy for a long time. Time will tell but from what i have seen from testing all of the beta's It has a great chance of being one of the good one's.
Just preordered!
according to the latest alpha notes, they have added more hairstyles to the defiant side, and will be releasing more for the guardian side soon.
My god has horns.... nah, I don't think he is real either.
I agree with alot of the review but I don't think I will pre-order. They did a nice job trying to add something different with the Rifts and I think they hit their mark of trying to tweek the genre. In then end though, that is all Trion did and for all of the frenzied fighting, the player still inhabits a static world that they cannot really affect. I think the game is a good diversion for short peiiods but I personally cannot justify putting down the $50 for a game that I would likely only play for a month or two at the most.